Magic 2014

The oldest game in the world gets another (good) installation.

To start things off, I'm not going to review Magic: The Gathering.  It's been around since the invention of the rectangle and there are uncountably many reviews of it out there already.  It's a card game between two players where you summon creatures and try to kill each other, or send each other back to the plane of misfortune, or some crap.  It's well made, there are about ten billion cards, and if you're looking for a card game that doesn't involve a standard deck of playing cards this is basically the king.  What we're really interested in is how Magic 2014 implements the game.

The basic idea behind Magic 2014 is that it's all digital.  You buy the game and start off with a starter deck which you use to play through the campaign.  As you defeat computer-controlled planeswalkers, AKA players, you earn more cards and sometimes even decks.  This repeats until you have enough cards to satisfy you, and since digital cards aren't actually worth money this will happen rather quickly.  That is, unless you're some obsessive weirdo who needs all the cards ever.  Like me.  Then you can feel free to play through the entire campaign and/or random battles with CPU opponents.  Do people still call them CPU opponents?  Whatever.

This is Chandra.  She's your best friend.

In the real world it's impossible to play Magic without someone else there.  This, of course, makes it rather difficult to just pick up and play.  With Magic 2014, and indeed any of the Magic video games, you can play Magic wherever you want.  That's a huge plus that far outweighs the fact that your cards are just an integer in a server somewhere.  The computer can range from incredibly easy to quite challenging so there's no need to play others necessarily.  This means Magic on a plane, in the car, in a dumpster, wherever you want it.  Assuming you have a laptop, anyway.  Again, all the Magic games that I'm aware of have this feature, so it's not unique to 2014.  You can also, should you so choose, duel other players over the internet.  There aren't a ton of people playing although it's never desolate so getting a match is rather easy.  There are different multiplayer modes like the popular Two-Headed Giant, AKA two versus two, and Sealed Deck which I actually don't know anything about.  Beats going down to Shinder's to play some weirdo you have to look at the whole time.  With your eyes.  It's a nightmare, really.

So Magic 2014 has the basics covered nicely.  That much is for true.  So how about the most important issue: the gameplay?  I don't claim to be a master of Magic but I do know how to play, and you'll be pleased to note that Magic 2014 is indeed Magic: The Gathering in every way.  It makes no fundamental changes and plays just like the real thing.  There's not a whole lot of "gameplay" to speak of, at least as far as video games go, so that right there covers about 90% of the actual review.  The game is Magic and it isn't not Magic.  One nice feature is the automation of the various phases and such.  On each turn you have I think five different "phases" where you can and cannot do certain things.  You start with the upkeep phase wherein you un-tap your cards, then you move onto the phase where you play cards, then battle, and so on.  Most of this stuff amounts to pointless busywork.  Nobody finds joy in untapping, i.e. turning upright, their eight land cards every thirty seconds.  This game does that for you and automatically continues to the next phase once everything is taken care of.  This alone is an absolute godsend despite being such a simple and fundamental feature.  Instead of having to worry about things like "Oh, this creature says it enters the board tapped, does that mean I shouldn't untap it during upkeep" and all that crap, you just play.  The game knows its own rules.  To Magic veterans all this stuff is muscle memory, but to a newbie it's one less thing they have to worry about remembering.

Chandra is also your enemy sometimes.

I will say one thing: there's a lot of waiting.  I don't mean an extended period of waiting between turns or anything like that.  You see, between phases there's a two second timer.  This doesn't sound like a lot, and on the surface it's not.  However, when you consider the fact that this happens five times a turn and games can easily last thirty turns per player, that's several minutes you spent sitting there per game when instead they could have let you skip the timer.  It's a minor complaint but I really have to mention everything I can lest this review just be about the graphics.

The graphics are...mixed.  The cards all have their artwork in a nice crisp resolution, all the flavor text is there, etc.  From a card standpoint the game looks as good as it can.  There are also simple animations that accompany attacks and spells.  Some of these are pretty, like most fire spells and the odd black/white spell, but most of the time you're going to get a simple "blood stamp" that indicates a player taking damage.  They could have gone into new and exciting realms of particle effects but they didn't, probably to keep the system requirements down.  There are no real graphics options outside of resolution and anti-aliasing so better particles would mean a better computer needed.  Of course, they could have just not been lazy and had an effects slider, but they didn't.  If you really want your matches to look all crazy, make a fire deck with a lot of sorceries.  Don't even bother with summoning.  I call it the Blaze Of Glory because you're guaranteed to die after setting everything on fire.

SPEAKING OF SETTING EVERYTHING ON FIRE

The game table itself is not so good.  It looks like something from the PS2 era which is a bit disappointing.  Again, I'm sure this is to keep requirements low, but at least let me change the texture detail or something.  Magic is one game where you can confidently say that graphics don't matter, but do you want to play on a PlaySkool table and have your library look like a painted loaf of bread?  No, you don't.  I can overlook this but it's definitely worth mentioning.  Keep your eyes on the cards and you'll be fine.

And finally, the filler.  The campaign has tons and tons of computer opponents ranging from stupid-ass imps who have no idea what the hell they're doing to archmages who can and will beat you if you don't have a strategy.  The campaign is mostly there to to amass cards and practice the game so don't expect anything totally crazy.  There are what the game calls encounters which are opponents who always play the same deck in the same order and some of them are pretty neat.  One of the earliest ones throws out as many cultists as quickly as it can with the end goal of having six cultists on the board at once.  If he manages to do that he'll sacrifice them to summon a demon.  It's not really a very flexible strategy in normal play but it's neat to see the computer using fringe tactics so you know how to counter them.  There's also plenty of cinematic footage which tells the story of a bunch of rogue planeswalkers.  It's your job to planeswalk on their throats until they cut it out, man.  They're alright and they add some character to the game but they're not a focus.

Here's one of the stupid-ass imps now, except this one is a zombie.

Current Price: $9.99
Verdict: Buy it if you like Magic

I can't really recommend this game to someone who isn't into Magic and doesn't want to be.  I mean, there's only so much you can do with the formula.  If the idea of having imaginary battles using cards repulses you, Magic 2014 isn't going to help with that.  If you do like Magic, though, this is a solid iteration of the series.  It's pretty obviously a budget title, but it's also a budget price and has a lot of content for those who seek it.  Complain if you dare, Planeswalker.  More like Complainswalker.