The game follows the same rules as Magic: The Gathering, as you'd expect. You take on the role of a 'Planeswalker', some kind of wizard, and you have to duel with another Planeswalker through the use of summoning cards. That solves the mystery of the title, then. The main single-player campaign has sixteen AI-controlled opponents for you to go up against. There are five kinds of coloured decks, each of which seem geared towards different playing-styles. For instance, cards from a red deck will be advantageous for attacking as often and early as possible, while cards from the blue deck are all about control and countering your opponent's spells.
Each player has twenty points of life, and the object of each match is to attack your opponent until their life reaches zero. Each match usually begins with each player laying down some mana or 'land cards'. You can play one of these every turn, and the amount (and the colour) of the mana you have determines what cards you can play. Players take turns to summon creatures, deal damage, 'enchant' their creatures for greater strength, or play other spells to heal themselves or such. It's a very deep system, and when playing through the single-player campaign, it's often as useful to memorise and know exactly what cards your opponent has in his deck, as it is to know what's in yours, so that you're prepared for every move they make.
Oh wow, it's like the most spectacular battle I've ever seen!
Duels of the Planeswalkers tries to get new players off to a good start with a tutorial mode, which takes you through a sample battle. To be honest, we found the tutorial to not be that helpful, and we learnt more from actually playing the game and just seeing what different cards did for ourselves, and before long we got into the swing of the game very nicely. The game adds a separate timer to every stage of the battle to try and speed things along, which means you can't dilly-dally too much when deciding which card to play or which cards to block or attack with. It's an interesting addition, although it feels very stop-start at times, and sometimes slows things down more than it's meant to. We wish there was some way to skip the opponent's turn altogether in the single-player mode. Once you're into the game and can make decisions more quickly, it is annoying waiting for your timers to do their thing, and even moreso waiting for your opponent's.
There are some other niggles for the newcomer as well. Often, you'll mess up by stupidly continuing when you should have played a card, and want to restart a match, but there is no option to, except to exit the game, and re-enter the match, facing two loading screens. It's a small problem, but an annoying one. For longtime Magic fans, there are some other problems which might put them off this release. For one, there is no deck construction, with the game instead forcing you to choose from a selection of pre-constructed decks. By playing through the game, you can unlock more decks as well as special cards you can insert into your decks to make them more powerful, but experienced players may be left wanting a little more control over their cards.
My God this is epic! This is, like, ten times more epic than the final battle of Lord of the Rings!
However, the game does offer several modes of gameplay. Alongside the single-player campaign, there's a 'Challenge' mode which poses a Magic situation to you and asks you to solve it in one turn. There is also the option to play (offline) co-operatively with a friend against the computer, and finally there's the multiplayer mode over Xbox Live, which is where you'll be spending a lot of your time if you're a Magic fan. It's worth ploughing through the single-player mode before you tackle online, as you'll have a better range of decks to select from, but the fact that the people you're going up against are most likely using the same range of cards that you have access to makes it seem a little more balanced.
There's not a lot to say about the presentation of Duels of the Planeswalkers. The graphics do the job, giving you a variety of themed tables to look at, and the cards are represented in quite a high quality fashion, and can be zoomed in to see further details. The special effects which represent attacks and blocks are fairly standard, with only a few animations. The music is well-orchestrated although a little generic. Overall, it's a clean, if unspectacular, looking game.
Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers is quite obviously a cut-down version of the real game. While experienced players will miss basic features like being able to construct their own decks, and new players may feel a little lost when they start, the core gameplay of the card game translates well enough to make the game very fun and extremely addictive. If you're looking for a cheaper way to play Magic: The Gathering, or just a fun arcade-styled card game, Duels of the Planeswalkers fits the bill nicely.
Loading...
