Learner's Permit
When I was growing up in the mean streets of suburban marlboro massachusetts, collectible card games were always a high point of contension. On one hand, you had the regular players, people (children) who had spent copious amounts of money on card packs after card packs, branching over various games with various rule systems of which I could never completely grasp. The only card game I was ever to real "get" was the pokemon card game, and even then, I was absolutely horrible. Throwing up my hands one day, some quiet afternoon after class, I swore myself off the collectibles forever, and wouldn't play another card game for nearly 10 years.
Now, currently, I'm long out of school and have a new circle of more professional friends, though a few of them do still play magic. A couple of them have rather impressive card collections that have been amassing since they were kids, and they've tried to teach me how to play a few times. They, however, are a bit too hardcore, and they've forgotten what it's like to have one's brains be soft and nubile, untained by years of tournament play and such. So when me and mine attended PAXEast'10, we stopped in at the wizards of the coast booth to see what we could see. While my friends were off attending live action D&D or scavanging for rare cards that may have been in the cheap vendor section, I sat down at a rather long table, and got a tutorial on how to play the game of Magic: The gathering. And after a few times, I got it. I understood. The game is complex, very cerebral, and very fun. I could finally, after years and years, understand why kids at my lunch table would save their lunch money to buy packs at the local stop and shop.
But even though I got it, I wasn't about to go out and buy up packs. Furthermore, I certainly wasn't about to try and find the Magic "scene" which a few of my cohorts tell me is mostly comprised of 12-16 year olds. So while scanning through new demos on XBLA, I was pleased to see Magic the gathering: Duels of the planeswalkers. Upon downloading the demo and playing a few games, I quickly purchased the full title and engaged a little deeper into the world that so many of my friends had known for so long.
As a learning tool, it's excellent. Teaching rules and conditions, acting as an advanced tutorial and sometimes providing ideas for various stratagems, the game served as a fairly excellent guide. Every loss I received was paired with knowledge of how I lost, and while many of those losses came due to poor shuffling, one could argue that the same situations happen in the physical game as well, so it's "authentic". A tad bit frustrating when you're trying to progress, but "authentic".
The game isn't much to look at though, it is a table and cards, and while the artwork on the cards themselves has always been something to write home about, the lacking aestetics wear thin after a while. Now, this is a card game and it's not like excellent visuals are anything terribly necessary. But having played games like Phanton Dust and Lost Kingdoms, it did start to feel less like the emersive world each scriptlet on each card would try and make you envision and more like a game of uno.
But after a while, I had it down, and as I gained more cards, my strategies grew. I became more knowledgable. The next time I hung out with some of my friends who still played, I borrowed a deck and we had a blast, drinking beers, slinging slanderous insults, getting into each other's heads as we tried to psyche out one another and gain the upper hand. We had a great time and vowed to do it again sometime. But that jovial nature is exactly whats missing from this XBLA title. Even playing online, the lack of personal interaction takes so much away from the game in general that it makes it difficult to enjoy. And while, if one is a novice, it servers as a great way to learn, experienced players are simply going to get bored by the shear fact that most opponents will simply be flipping cards. There are no tells that can sway ones ideas when playing online. The impersonal nature of it all really does the game irreparable harm.
But, that being said, it is fun, and does get challenging. It gets you up to date with the newest rules and shows you strategies you may not have thought of. But it does get bland after a while and because of that, it wears thin quickly. This is simply a case of try the demo and see how it feels. It does what it does quite well, but when you outgrow the training wheels, there's simply not much else to captivate an audience.
