Marvel Trading Card Game Review

[Joseph]

Marvel Trading Card Game Review by Joseph

PALGN Review: Our Spidey-sense is tingling.

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[emech]

2nd opinion:

I picked this up some time ago and played story mode till completion, having previously played a few casual games with my brothers from a starter deck.

THE NEGATIVE

1) ITS NOT NEWBIE FRIENDLY - the tutorials are LONG text paragraphs, full of game jargon that confuse/bore you less then 1/2 way through.

2) DECK CONSTRUCTION is nowhere near as efficent as the YU-GI-OH DS drag and drop method. It has far fewer sorting options too.

3) The ICONS are small - and sometimes require a 2nd hit to confirm (rare but it happened)

4) Its far to easy to pass over and miss a turn phase in rushed clicking of the next button

Sound pretty bad?? Well thats about it for the negatives from me, and none of them are game-breaking, just interface issues.

POSITIVES
The game rules appear to be accurate - The AI is well balanced - Its WI-FI CCOMPATIBLE - Its a HELL of a lot cheaper then buying the real game (although 3 expansions behind as of now, and no DC decks, I'm really hoping for a sequal) - UNLIKE the PC version, all the cards from its contained sets are present (you have to buy boosters with CASH in the PC version, as they run $$ winning tournamanets and host servers which need funding from users) - FOR ME, the games structure does capture the feel of heros battling, with powers, fist-a-cuffs and arcobatics abounding and was simply good value.

Overall? The interface and newbie friendless could use some refinment - but after you get throgh the inital (steep) learning curve, value for money fun abounds - 8.5 /10
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GAMES: http://www.playfire.com/emech/games/

[emech]

Oh, I might add, those screens shots a pre-release and vary abit from the final release.....
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GAMES: http://www.playfire.com/emech/games/

[Joseph]

Unfortunetly, those were the only screens avaliable from gamespress.
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[Flypaper]

I'm really impressed by the AI in this game, actually. I've seen what abortive attempts at M:tG AI look like and MTCG has done really well by comparison. Of course, it probably helps that the computer is always given straightforward (and powerful!) decks.

...There's a couple of holes, mind you. The AI doesn't know how to deal with rule-changing cards like Storm, Weather Witch (back-row enemy characters can't attack). They often don't use character special abilities that might otherwise win them the game. And they keep attacking into Bishop...

And yeah, the screenies look quite different from the final game. Plus it's probably worth mentioning in the comparison to the PC/PSP versions that you don't have to shell out real money for multiplayer cards in the DS version.