Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers Preview

By modeps May 8, 2009 1 Comments

There's been a few Magic: The Gathering games, and none of them have been really that great. Magic: The Gathering Online unfortunately made you purchase your own cards and booster packs digitally to create your decks. At that point, why not just play live with real cards? It worked well enough but always felt a little too clunky for its own good, never having that bit of polish that could have helped it excel.

Trying to capitalize on this wonderful game created in 1993, Stainless Games has attempted to reproduce the duel experience with Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers, making it accessible to veterans and newcomers alike. I was able to get my hands on a preview copy thanks to the kind folks at Wizards of the Coast, allowing me a peek and see how it was shaping up.

Anyone familiar with the card game should feel right at home here, but in case you aren't, there's a pretty straightforward tutorial game that you can play through showing you some of the basics involved in playing. Concepts such as mana, tapping, instants, sorceries, haste, first strike and more will be taught throughout the tutorial and as they come into play during the campaign mode. Each is introduced in a gradual way until you're familiar with all the rules and phases of play.

While the tutorial was a great refresher for myself (I used to play but have not in some years), my concern is that newcomers, even with the nice tutorial, will be a bit lost without someone there to ask questions of. This isn't a problem with Duels mind you, just the general way Magic works. There's just a ton of stuff to take in with all the minor rule clarifications that can come into play with stack order and resolutions.

Opting for a more streamlined approach, Stainless has removed the complexity of deck building and instead went with a trimmed down customization system in it's place. As you play though the campaign, you'll unlock additional cards which you'll then be able to insert into pre-built decks (which also are unlocked through the campaign). As many M:tG players know, building a deck from scratch is a time consuming, iterative process that takes quite a bit of playtesting. I have a feeling that this current system will allow players to tune their decks with just enough variety to keep things fresh and interesting removing the whole aspect of having to run out to your local nerd shop and buy more boosters.

Speaking of boosters, I did inquire about downloadable content for Duels. While no specifics could be provided to me as to what would be included in relation to cards, I was told players can expect periodic content available post launch, and information on that would be forthcoming. Also, there has been word that premium themes will be available based on Duels as well as alternate in-game playfields and backgrounds.

The game in general looks superb. Everything was very crisp and easy to read on my HDTV, and the card art looks fantastic no matter what level of zoom its at. During the game you're able to select any card in play and press the right trigger to enlarge it, giving you a perfect view of abilities, flavor text, toughness, casting cost, et al. The only way this could possibly get any better is if you were physically holding the them. Card sets included with Duels run anywhere from Invasion to Shards of Alara. Additionally, folks who are into the lore of Magic will be happy to know that there will be info related to Nissa Revane, a new Planeswalker, that has not yet been released.

One of my minor quibbles with the look though is that its very vanilla. What the developers aimed to do, they truly succeeded. They created a digitized version of you sitting at a table, playing cards against someone. There's no animations on the cards themselves... no 3D modeling of creatures attacking one another and only minor spell effects. While 3D creatures beating up on each other could get old, it would have been nice to see a little extra pizazz added. After all, you're two mages throwing crazy powerful spells at each other.

A second small issue I had was that the musical backing track presented in my preview (which may or may not be there in the final build) was atrocious. It was about as generic as you could get. As it stands now, I would have preferred emphasis on the general SFX and no music. If this remains, be sure to have a custom playlist ready for your dueling.

One of the features of Duels I was not able to get my hands on (but desperately wanted to) was the multiplayer... I was given some information to disseminate on that regard though. You'll be able to play MP games with 2 to 4 players, both competitively and cooperatively, ranked and unranked. Game modes revealed thus far are free-for-all matches and my personal favorite, two-headed giant, where two teams of two players play against each other, sharing a life pool of 40. This can be done vs AI or real people in Duels.

Lastly, in addition to the campaign, training, and multiplayer modes mentioned above, there will be a set of puzzles and challenges where you'll be asked to perform a certain task within the confines of a specific scenario.

While I feel that nothing can really take the place of a well seasoned Magic: The Gathering player teaching someone how to play live and in person, what Stainless Games has produced here is just about as close to the live experience that you can get in a digital format. If you're a Magic player (new, old, retired), or even someone interested in playing, be sure to give this a look when it comes out. Even in it's trial build, its great.

Preliminary Score: 4.5 out of 5

The Good

• This is a near perfect digital representation of Magic: The Gathering
• Fantastic looking high-resolution cards and artwork
• Plays very well with a 360 controller
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The Bad

• Horrible soundtrack
• Vanilla
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The Ugly

• Three Spined Wurms (5/4) with Overrun (a +3/+3/Trample). OUCH.

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