Genre: Card Battle Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Developer: Stainless Games Players: 1-4
Each deck will have one or any combination of five colours – white, black, blue, red and green – which indicates the type of game the deck will offer. Black cards deal with death and the regeneration of dead creatures; White decks offer light and boosting features; Blue are laden with counterspells; Green decks are based on nature and regrowth; and Red decks are quick killing, fireball throwing offensive compilations. Combinations of colours are also great at mixing features of each, like a red/black deck dealing massive creature damage while bringing your own creatures back into play.
Part of the appeal of the card game itself is the incredibly complex manoeuvres you can pull off, from unlimited damage or life combos to tactically making your creatures all massively powerful for one round when your nemesis can’t block. Previous online Magic games have been relatively successful, if clunky and with a steep learning curve.
Duels of the Planeswalkers, on the other hand, is instantly accessible and, with the game itself helping guide your choices, becomes incredibly easy to get into the swing of things. It does nothing to dent the potential for tactical play, but newcomers will welcome the little features that help the player along.
When it comes to your turn, the game highlights which cards you can play, meaning you can see at a glance how you can progress, and this helps speed things along nicely rather than having to read every card in your hand on every turn. The game has a dedicated countdown timer that can be paused at any time, allowing tapping effects or instants to be played effortlessly, or left to run and thus stopping someone holding up the game for an age.
Each round is also broken down into definite parts – main phase, attack, block, damage, main phase again - meaning it never gets confusing even when there are lots of cards in play. Learning how to best use your hand through the various phases becomes key to survival.
The game itself offers a considerable amount of play options. There’s a single player career mode, through which you battle a range of AI characters, all with different decks and deck colours. Beat an AI, and you can use their deck in your single player campaign, and each time you record a win against the AI you’re rewarded with an unlocked card for that deck, encouraging you to have another swing at it to see how these new cards work. Once you’ve finished the campaign, you can go back and replay any of the character with any deck, each time adding a new card to the particular deck with each recorded win.
Considering there are eight decks offering 17 new cards each, you’ll need (quick maths) 136 wins to unlock all the cards.
Beyond the single player, despite the need to rack up so many wins, is the online side of things and it is here that the real fun is to be had. There are a surprisingly wide range of options available, from straight up 1v1 to four player free for all, and then two headed giant, which is essentially 2v2. This is where we had the most fun, against both friends who were playing to random people met through matchmaking. Our only real complaint is the fact people can quit right before the end of a match and thus prevent you recording your win, bringing back bad memories from playing FIFA online.
The game is no visual extravaganza but it’s not sterile either. Spells like incinerate are accompanied with a fireball across the table to the target card, and every time a black card deals damage, a swarm of flies encircle the victim. The subdued visuals serve to help keep focus on the game itself, and can all be cancelled with a click of a button.
At the moment, you can only play with one of eight premade decks (and your unlockable cards). This will be a big disappointment for real fans of the series who would like to get into the engine of a deck and build it from the ground up. It’s the biggest sacrifice the game has made in effort to have broader appeal, but could be rectified down the line depending on the success of the release.
As it stands, Duels of the Planeswalkers is a really enjoyable game. It allows newcomers to learn the ropes while letting experts get straight into duelling. Should it receive extensive support in the future – buying decks online, booster packs, online trading of cards – it could be massive. We sincerely hope it will be expanded down the line, because after a few days straight playing, we’d like to see some variation or the ability to construct duelling decks from scratch. But for your Microsoft Points, it’s something that comes highly recommended.
By Keith B (23rd Jun 2009)
Trading blows with opponents has made the transition from cards to Live Arcade well, even if it lacks some features that dedicated players will lament.
Magic: The Gathering is a successful card game, no doubt about that. The method of drawing from your deck, laying defensive and offensive plans and trying to whittle your opponent down from 20 life to zero has always been entertainment, although mainly for the people that have invested time and money in assembling a variety of decks to combat different foes.
Newly released onto the Xbox Live Marketplace is Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers, which whittles down the complexity and replaces it with sit-and-play appeal and plenty of items to unlock.
For those initiated with the card game, this is a simple breakdown. Each player starts the game with 20 life, and a starting hand of seven cards. Each player takes turns to draw a card, drop a land card, and then ‘tap’ the land to cast spells of creature cards. The cards in play – creatures, enchantments, and so on – are then used to battle against your enemy, while they get the chance to use their in-play creatures to block attacks. The first person to lose their 20 life, loses the game.
Each deck will have one or any combination of five colours – white, black, blue, red and green – which indicates the type of game the deck will offer. Black cards deal with death and the regeneration of dead creatures; White decks offer light and boosting features; Blue are laden with counterspells; Green decks are based on nature and regrowth; and Red decks are quick killing, fireball throwing offensive compilations. Combinations of colours are also great at mixing features of each, like a red/black deck dealing massive creature damage while bringing your own creatures back into play.
Part of the appeal of the card game itself is the incredibly complex manoeuvres you can pull off, from unlimited damage or life combos to tactically making your creatures all massively powerful for one round when your nemesis can’t block. Previous online Magic games have been relatively successful, if clunky and with a steep learning curve.
Duels of the Planeswalkers, on the other hand, is instantly accessible and, with the game itself helping guide your choices, becomes incredibly easy to get into the swing of things. It does nothing to dent the potential for tactical play, but newcomers will welcome the little features that help the player along.
When it comes to your turn, the game highlights which cards you can play, meaning you can see at a glance how you can progress, and this helps speed things along nicely rather than having to read every card in your hand on every turn. The game has a dedicated countdown timer that can be paused at any time, allowing tapping effects or instants to be played effortlessly, or left to run and thus stopping someone holding up the game for an age.
Each round is also broken down into definite parts – main phase, attack, block, damage, main phase again - meaning it never gets confusing even when there are lots of cards in play. Learning how to best use your hand through the various phases becomes key to survival.
The game itself offers a considerable amount of play options. There’s a single player career mode, through which you battle a range of AI characters, all with different decks and deck colours. Beat an AI, and you can use their deck in your single player campaign, and each time you record a win against the AI you’re rewarded with an unlocked card for that deck, encouraging you to have another swing at it to see how these new cards work. Once you’ve finished the campaign, you can go back and replay any of the character with any deck, each time adding a new card to the particular deck with each recorded win.
Considering there are eight decks offering 17 new cards each, you’ll need (quick maths) 136 wins to unlock all the cards.
Beyond the single player, despite the need to rack up so many wins, is the online side of things and it is here that the real fun is to be had. There are a surprisingly wide range of options available, from straight up 1v1 to four player free for all, and then two headed giant, which is essentially 2v2. This is where we had the most fun, against both friends who were playing to random people met through matchmaking. Our only real complaint is the fact people can quit right before the end of a match and thus prevent you recording your win, bringing back bad memories from playing FIFA online.
The game is no visual extravaganza but it’s not sterile either. Spells like incinerate are accompanied with a fireball across the table to the target card, and every time a black card deals damage, a swarm of flies encircle the victim. The subdued visuals serve to help keep focus on the game itself, and can all be cancelled with a click of a button.
At the moment, you can only play with one of eight premade decks (and your unlockable cards). This will be a big disappointment for real fans of the series who would like to get into the engine of a deck and build it from the ground up. It’s the biggest sacrifice the game has made in effort to have broader appeal, but could be rectified down the line depending on the success of the release.
As it stands, Duels of the Planeswalkers is a really enjoyable game. It allows newcomers to learn the ropes while letting experts get straight into duelling. Should it receive extensive support in the future – buying decks online, booster packs, online trading of cards – it could be massive. We sincerely hope it will be expanded down the line, because after a few days straight playing, we’d like to see some variation or the ability to construct duelling decks from scratch. But for your Microsoft Points, it’s something that comes highly recommended.
8.7
Single Play
8.7
Friend Play
8.8
Multi Play
8.8
Graphics
7.6
Sound
6.6
Challenge
7.6
Entertainment
9.2
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Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers
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Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers (X360)
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KB you have tried to teach me this card game many many many times and it was always in one ear and out the other. Gunner tried to teach me once as well. No good.