June 24th, 2009
chasing the shivan dragon
Magic: The Gathering is a property that formed the foundation of a tabletop gaming empire for a new generation of gamers, changing the face of a hobby that until then was buried in basements and isolated in musty smelling comic book shops. And yet its history in video games is pretty shameful in the numerous attempts to bring this brand even further into the mainstream. While most of the titles bore only a passing resemblance to their inspiration[1], Magic: The Gathering Online (2002) was the closest thing you could get to actually playing the card game.
The recently released Duels of the Planeswalkers (2009), available on Xbox Live Arcade, is not Magic: The Gathering Online. It is the card game pared down to its most essential components.
As an ex-Magic player that dropped out shortly after the Ice Age expansion in the mid 1990s[2], Duels has reawakened my respect for what Richard Garfield created in the game of Magic: The Gathering. Despite launching the completely ridiculous trend of collectible card games.
Much like my time with Games Workshop’s Warhammer, I found that the amount of one-upmanship that goes on in these hobbies borders on the unfair if you have unlimited resources (ie. Money) to sink into your collection. Players who don’t invest as much money in the hobby are immediately at a disadvantage when going up against the players who are well equipped and dialed right in to the latest cards and strategies for maximizing the return on their investment. The arms race continues until the only ones left standing are the demigods with ultra-powerful decks containing hundreds of dollars worth of cards. Of course, going into tournaments there are rules for this to balance the playing field, but I’m just generalizing here for the sake of my argument.
Duels of the Planeswalkers is a pre-packaged Magic: The Gathering experience. It successfully captures the essence of the game, without bogging down the player with a ton of cards that all end up doing basically the same thing when you really look into it. And this seems to be the biggest complaint about the game: the lack of comprehensive deck building tools.
Duels gives you a set number of decks to unlock through the single player campaign, while also unlocking individual cards for use in customizing these decks. “Customizing” is a very loose term in this context: you’re either using it in the deck, or you aren’t. There’s no way to get new cards after they have all been unlocked, and you can’t create a completely new deck. For some people this is too limiting, and makes this interpretation of Magic somehow less authentic.
I don’t think the Campaign mode is particularly interesting in the way that it creates “characters” for you to fight; I’d rather have seen an AI controlled player that randomly selects one of the pre-built decks and plays with it, which would provide the most replayability in single player mode. However, I don’t think this was the game’s main thrust. The Campaign mode was put in to get players familiar with the mechanics of play, to (re)learn the rules, and to get comfortable working in high pressure situations. At first, the inexperienced player will feel overwhelmed while they get acquainted with the cards and the rules of the game itself. And this is just the set-up. What Wizards and Stainless wanted to ultimately produce was a game that approximates the experience of playing the card game with humans in the online mode.
By limiting the number of cards and decks, the game is already pre-balanced. New players will never feel like they will be overpowered by some unknown card, and experienced players will be able to make the most out of their decks from the beginning. This effectively curtails the arms race. There is a ceiling that is predefined: once everything is unlocked everyone is going to be using the same cards. In the end, it simply comes down to luck (just like the real thing) and being skilled enough to use the cards at hand to overpower your opponent.
Putting in the Challenge mode was a terrific idea, as I found it to be an excellent training tool. It is a collection of “puzzles” that sets up one turn where you must win the game with the cards in play and in your hand. It encourages players to test their knowledge of the game; to solve a puzzle by taking advantage of its nuanced rules. This would then carry over into the Campaign or online versus mode, where you are working with the same cards and with enough luck and determination can put together a similar last-ditch counter-attack. However, there are only eight of these challenges and the advanced player will rip right through them.
Some might say that this game is simply a focus-grouped promotional tool for the upcoming release of the 11th Core Set that will get people out and buying into the physical card game. I would partially agree; It’s pretty clear from the beginning that Wizards and Stainless focus-grouped the shit out of this game, but it was to make it balanced for new and experienced players to enjoy the essentials of Magic: the Gathering. It’s no Magic: Online, but to me that was always for the players I mentioned earlier; they just don’t want to go out and physically buy the cards. Those players will never touch Duels because it is not meant for them. They should stop complaining.
I must admit I felt the pull of my old card collection, long since sold, after playing a few rounds of Duels. But it’s just another box of stuff that would end up collecting dust in a closet somewhere in my house. I’m glad I can pick up this game, play it, and put it away knowing that I have spent only $10 for an experience that will remain timeless.
- Just take a look at the screenshots at MobyGames. What the hell were those, anyway? ↩
- I got the Scaled Wurm in my Ice Age starter deck. ↩
June 24th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I dunno, I still think that the lack of any deck building is a huge omission. Or, more so, even the limited customization options for the built in decks. I understand the reasoning for it and can appreciate making the game accessible for newcomers and old returners (like me too; though, coincidentally, I started with Ice Age), but not having it at all, if even just for matches against friends, takes away half of the point of the game. That meta-game is as important to Magic as the actual playing of it.
And if my impressions of Magic were solely through this, they wouldn’t be all that positive. Besides, none of the available decks suit my playing style and, I find, they are (partly because how they’re all balanced) a little too luck dependent for my tastes. Newcomers might be frustrated by that, I think. While luck is a factor of the game, good deck building can minimize that and not having ability makes the actual games more of a crapshoot than they should be.
Coincidentally, since I have no interest in sitting in a dungeon with smelly nerds to play M:TG, this game IS a good promotional item: it makes me want to play a competitor, Culdcept, again. A game in which I *can* customize my deck and I can still find something new to do after the initial novelty wears off. Unlike Duels.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Great, great summary. I avoided all other reviews while I was writing mine, but rushed over here right after publishing it to see what you thougt.
I have to disagree with your opinion on Planeswalkers… I think they actually add interest to the game where it is needed (trying to conquer the single player campaign). It’s like Ridley or Kraid in Metroid: you drop the name so that other players will know what you’re up against. Telling someone you fought a black and red burn deck just isn’t the same.
I tried playing Magic Online when 9th Edition came out and found it unbearable. It waits for confirmation from both players after every single phase? It was like pulling teeth.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:41 am
@n0wak:
I initially had the same impression as you when I first played the game. It felt like I had been given a starter deck and that was all I was allowed to use, regardless of how crappy it was. I can also understand the frustration behind the construction of the included decks: personally, I hate the Green deck because of all the fucking Wurms in there that always seem to come out when I’ve assembled my finishing strategy with White. It’s easier for new/inexperienced players to get carried away with summoning giant monsters and use the brute force approach, which almost always wins. This is frustrating for the veteran, who wants to play a more thoughtful or challenging game.
But to say that deck building takes away half of the point of this version of the game? I’d disagree. In some tournaments, players are given sealed decks that they must assemble the first day, and they play with it for the remainder of the tournament. Duels short circuits the deck building process and just gives you a few that have a very good chance of winning, and sets you on your way. In the Single Player mode, the initial challenge is learning these new decks and what they can do. Then, later on in the campaign, taking advantage of the ones that have been unlocked to suit your opponent.
Indeed, Duels relies heavily on luck, but as I said about the Challenges in the original post, there always seems to be a way to pull off a victory at the last second because you just drew that card you needed. I think the biggest problem is with the initial draw, because I found I was getting either too much mana or too little. This usually decided the outcome of the game (ie. I would LOSE). If Stainless tweaked that with a patch, I think it would be in pretty good shape.
I like that Duels is pre-packaged, and cannot change. My biggest worry about this game is that there is potential for DLC that contains more cards, or new decks. I doubt there is much money in it (how much staying power this game has remains to be seen), but for players that go online it has the potential for the same problems I mention in the post. I’m sure there’s a way to match players that are playing with the core decks versus DLC decks, but then again, how much architecture is Microsoft and Stainless willing to put in place for this game?
@thesimplicity
Really? You’re going to namedrop Ajani Goldmane and Chandra Nalaar to a non-Magic player that has played the XBLA game? Somehow I doubt this proclamation carries the same weight as beating a boss or level in what would be considered a “standard” video game. You’re fighting the deck, not the avatar – there’s no need to disguise it, especially if someone is already familiar with the CCG. I still think a vanilla AI that selects a deck at random out of the cards available in-game would have made the Single-player mode more satisfying, because you wouldn’t know what you were up against. Plus, no dealing with online matches that end early because someone is losing.
Also: pixie dust on a Canadian strip club? Nice.
June 26th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Oh, I know. Sealed deck tournaments and Booster Drafts were my favourite way to play MTG because they didn’t need that massive up-front investment. And while certainly the luck of the draw was a big factor in those tournaments, you still could modify your deck to suit your needs. Magic is all about managing, and minimizing, luck. If you can’t change your deck, you can’t do a whole lot and you’re dependent on what you’re given. This doesn’t really paint the picture of what the game is really about.
But mostly I’m annoyed that I can’t do any direct damage with the blue deck :\
June 26th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Yeah, that blue deck is pretty brutal. You have to know your stuff when using that one.
And that kind of folds in to what we’re talking about. To me, each deck included with the game was built to highlight the strengths of each color. Need Life and lots of monster buffs? Use White. Need big offense? Use Green. Like counterspells/cancels? Use Blue, etc. Yes, there are equivalent cards in each color if you broadened the scope of cards to choose from, but for an essential version of this game, I think this approach works really well.
There were a lot of expectations from experienced MTG players for what this game should be. It’s a representative sample of what playing MTG is like. And as that, it succeeds.