Magic: The Gathering, the most popular collectible trading card game out there, has surfaced on Xbox Live, and while the game keeps to the basic concepts of Magic, the lack of options and shoddy A.I. keep it from being as good as the actual card game itself.
If you have never played Magic: The Gathering before, the concept is simple enough to learn, and base gameplay easier to understand. Using a deck of at least sixty cards, and with the tools in that deck, cause the opponent’s life to run to zero from a start of twenty. Magic consists of cards of two types; spells, and land. The land produces mana to pay for spells. With five different colors to choose from, each with their own styles of play. Red, which has mana produced from mountains, excels on speed based play, with quick creatures and direct damage. Black earns its color with spells and creatures that often require a sacrifice of your own life or creatures, often for bigger and better effects. Likewise, blue spells often deal with control of the board, and keeping options available to the player. Green prides itself on overkill, while white stems from order, balance, and law. The kind you’ll use the most in the Xbox Live variant is creatures, which are able to attack your opponent, and provide you defense against the same on the other side. Instants and sorceries provide various one-time effects, while artifacts and enchantments stay in play to provide constant bonuses.
The game has the feel of a fantasy board, and the cards themselves are well detailed and enjoyable to sift through and play. The game will automatically group various types of cards together, with lands keeping their own row while creatures keep to the left hand side of the board. Enchantment spells and artifacts will stay to the right, and all of your opponent’s cards will follow in a similar manner.
The beginning deck choices are limited, but more options open up through the campaign, which is a series of one-on-one battles against the computer. These battles are themed to the deck; the dark wizardess Liliana Vess will use the black deck, while the knight-errant Elspeth will keep you busy with the white deck, though those are not the only opponents. In time, as the campaign is won, decks of multiple colors will be unlocked, allowing for more complex gameplay. While the campaign provides some difficulty, there are times where the A.I. will make horrible decisions, and leave you scratching your head. Even tweaking the difficulty setting in the options does little to hinder this; and a lot of times, you’ll wonder what the programmers were thinking when they coded it.
In addition, with each victory, a card for the deck that is used is also unlocked. These cards tend to range from duplicates that help balance the deck, to extremely powerful rare cards that will provide a direct advantage to you when played. Any of the unlocked cards can be removed from the deck if the player chooses; yet the base deck that is issued cannot be altered in any way, and is rather frustrating, considering how decks in cardboard versions of the game are customizable. This is really an example of laziness on the behalf of the developers, since many players will get a feel for the cards and have a desire to ‘tune’ the deck further.
In addition to a single player campaign, there is also a cooperative option, in which yourself and a friend face off against two opponents, both teammates taking their turns at the same time. Instead of the standard twenty life, instead thirty will be shared between the team. Communication is key to this mode, as you’ll be coordinating attacks and options with your ally in order to prevent your own cards counteracting each other. In this, the campaign provides the most fun, with a friend.
Outside of the online aspect, the only other mode is a challenge mode, which tasks you with solving a puzzle, with a pre-selected hand and situation. While this provides some entertainment, there are not enough situations there to distract the player from the regular game for very long.
Interestingly, the online aspect of Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers is standard, and allows for people to play up to three opponents, each taking the side of the board. The larger the group, the more fun it is, with strategy taking a seat alongside interest as to who perceives who as the greatest threat. Sadly, the option for online two-headed giant games is absent, and disappointing. Sometimes, there is an occasional bug or glitch that stalls the game, and actually kicks one or more of the players out of the online frenzy, which is a cause for anger in of itself. But with recent patches, that seems to have been fixed.
A few bugs aside, Duels of the Planeswalkers is a very enjoyable version of Magic: The Gathering, and at the price off 800 Microsoft Points, it is one of the better purchases you’ll find on Xbox Live. It’s a great tool for newcomers to learn the game, as well as a pleasant experience for the veteran players of the game.
5.0