- Concept
- Graphics
- Sound
- Playability
- Entertainment
For any of you that does not know, Magic: The Gathering is a game played with specialized cards that the player must collect. Players take turns drawing cards from a deck, playing the lands and drawing mana from the lands to get the ability to call different creatures to your aid, and to cast various spells. The different lands in the card decks were represented by different colors, and the colors also represented a certain type of magic. The cards depicting the forests were green, all the swamp cards were black, the red cards were the mountains, the plains were the white cards, and the blue cards represented islands.
Magic: The Gathering-Duels of The Planes Walkers takes this collectible card game and gives it brand new life. You will not have to skip the game because you never played the card version, the developers did an excellent job of explaining how everything works, and you will be playing like an old pro in no time. One of the best parts is the entire game is selling for around $10, and it would cost you that much to buy one deck of the collectible cards. So you will get a lot more playing experience with this version than you would have with the original, for a fraction of the cost.
Concept
The developers get high marks for taking a game of this kind and creating such a great playing game. There are many different options in the game play and you can play both single player games, and multiplayer games. The single player can choose from three different campaigns to play. The main campaign in the game has you playing one on one against different wizards, all of which have different cards to play with. After you defeat the wizards you will win two prizes, one of these prizes will be the deck of cards that the wizard had, and the other prize will be additional cards that go in the deck you used to defeat the wizard with. You also have puzzles in this game that are like games of chess, where you have to figure out how you will make a checkmate in a certain amount of moves.
Graphics
When we began to play this game we were genuinely impressed with the visual effects that are included. While the graphics are not the very best you ever saw, they are better than the average visual effects, and there depictions of the wizards and the magical spells do fit the play of the game perfectly.
Sound
The developers could have spent a longer amount of time concentrating on the soundtrack they created for this one. You will more than likely not notice the sounds during much of the game, as they are rather nondescript, but there are times when the sound seems to take over the game, and overpower the actions of the player. Sound does not really have that much effect on the game play that much, so we are never really concerned about whether or not the noise playing along with the game is pleasing, or annoying. After all, there is a mute button when sound is a problem.
Playability
Because the developers worked so hard at explaining the way the game is played, and the concept behind the game, this version of Magic: The Gathering is easy to play. There is no reason why someone would not be able to play this game.
Entertainment
There are enough variations in the way the game can be played to keep the player entertained. With the different wizards to beat, and the puzzles to figure out, you will certainly not be bored.
Replay Value
There is a high replay value associated with the game, because the player has the choice of three different fighting campaigns to play in the single player version alone. There are also challenge versions that can be played, and several different options to be chosen when you play the multiplayer versions.
