I should start this review by saying that I have never played Magic in my entire life. I knew of its existence through means of the internet, booster packs of cards in various outlets, and a friend who was somewhat fond of the game. However, I was never drawn to play it, as I was never much of a fan of card games.
For those who don’t know, Magic the Gathering is a 20-year-old trading card game, the first of its kind in fact. The main aim of the game is to whittle down you’re opponents 20 hit points to zero, by summoning creatures and beasts, and using spells modifiers and other elemental attributes in head to head battles. And there is quite the extensive collection of cards for you to accomplish this task.
The game does quite an admirable job at introducing newcomers to the series, such as myself. Upon booting up the game, you are greeted by a message that asks you’re level of experience with Magic, and allows you to play through some insightful, albeit tedious, tutorials. In this respect, the game is actually a great tool for crafting you skills for the real life card game.
On the presentation front, the game is rather hit or miss. It doesn’t push the envelope in terms of looks. Menus are populated with still images of characters, the battlefield where all encounters take place is coloured in very dark shades of blues and black, the interface is simple enough to navigate, with all relevant information displayed in an appropriate manner. The story mode is presented through a mix of text based encounters, and fully rendered CGI cutscenes, that are oddly rather obscurely dubbed.
Quite disappointedly, the action that each card performs when attacking is very underwhelming and underutilized. Being a virtual representation of the beloved card game, there was a great opportunity for visual flair to shine through here, especially with some of the larger beasts you are given control of. Instead, we are given are rather lazy effort of a generic sound bite, and a basic animation that is used across the board for representing the same type of attack. (Eg. Most dog type creatures will have a simple bite mark appear on the opponent’s card.) It’s an oversight which could have bumped up the presentation considerably.
The action looks visually dull.
However, some elements of the presentation help make up for the previously mentioned lackluster areas. The art in this game is simply phenomenal. Each and every one of the cards are illustrated in beautiful amounts of detail, by various different artists, with each image perfectly suited to the theme of each of the sets within the game. The oddly lengthy loading screens are blown up versions of randomly selected cards, and for me personally made waiting for the game to load a treat, rather than a chore, with some pieces being simply breath-taking.
Below are two of my favourite card designs:
Musically, the score is rather fitting. While there are one or two duds, as to be expected with any soundtrack, I found it to be very easy to listen too. It is comprised of electronically atmospheric pieces, to orchestrated battle themes. It is never too powerful or overbearing, matching the strategic and thoughtful tone of the game. The victory theme is also delightfully satisfying.
All that being said, my main problem with this title is in the gameplay itself. It lies with the core structure of Magic itself. For someone not usually accustomed to this type of play, strategic and slow planning of every meticulous move, I found it somewhat monotonous. And this is further exemplified within the virtual game. The system itself is quite slow. Each move has a delay for it to activate, and then be cast, then giving more time in case you wish to cast an “instant,” a spell temporarily adding a certain effect to your creature, with further time used for the attack phase, and so on and so forth. Against the rather dull AI fights, whereby a set strategy is determined that it sticks to a rarely changes the formula. This can of course be remedied by the online component, when there is an actual human brain behind the moves being cast, but throughout the entire experience, I couldn’t shake of the feeling of boredom that had been cast upon me.
Elsewhere in the other modes, a bit of spice is thrown into the formula, with Sealed play taking the more traditional approach of magic by letting you open up a sets of booster cards and build up your own deck from them, even letting the game assemble them for those who would rather jump straight into the Sealed Play campaign. A challenge mode, where you are thrown into a situation and have to figure a way defeating your foe in one, is quite interesting, and most definitely satisfying. However while they did give the game an extra oomph, and some added replay value, it still isn’t enough for me to gain extra enjoyment from this game.
Some other nit-picks I had with this game are; the odd glitches. As I mentioned above, this game is not pushing the envelope by any means; yet, the game is littered with bugs. The opening Wizards of the coast logo tends to stop about a second in, there is screen tearing aplenty, the start screen stutters and cuts out the audio every time I boot it up, audio clipping can be severe if multiple attacks are launched, giving an ear-piercing cluster of sound, and for such a simple game, it tends to run the PlayStation pretty hard, with mine humming with pressure as though I was playing a high-end a game. As well as that, the game tends to be littered with advertisements for the paper format of Magic, even going as far as to place the ads in the extras menu. It is all quite the odd occurrence, especially considering it’s the 4th game in the franchise.
In conclusion, I am not overly impressed with the game. It did not appeal to me as I hoped it would have, especially regarding the 20 year legacy its paper form has. The faults in presentation did also derail the experience somewhat and just added to my frustrations with this title. However, I’d be hard-pressed to deny the value for money you get with this game. At the very reasonable price of €8, it’s hard to not applaud the effort made with this instalment. Packed full of content, extras, some delicious art to feast your eyes upon, I see this as quite a welcome treat to veterans of the Magic card game. If you’re a long-time fan, or like me, are simply interested in venturing into this series, Magic 2014 is a great way of introducing yourself to the world of the strategic trading card game, and a welcome addition to PSN’s extensive library of games.