Game: Magicka
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Arrowhead Game Studios
Genre: Action Adventure
Price: $9.99
Verdict: A clever take on spell casting during a journey of laughter and occasional frustration.
Pros: Fresh and fun spell casting, lots of fun with friends. Very affordable.
Cons: Steep learning curves, especially when playing single player. Some bugs still getting ironed out.
Acquired Via Publisher
Magicka had a bit of a rough start. While first day sales were rather high, the game was plagued with bugs. It’s been a couple of weeks since release now, and Arrowhead game studios has been patching the game almost nonstop. After some work, Magicka is in a lot better shape, but is it right for you?
You take the role of a nondescript Wizard of the Order of Magick, but you aren’t nondescript for long. It seems that the capital city of Hávindr is under attack, and the order has chosen you as the hero who gets to save the world. Lucky you! Before you head off, the other wizards are kind enough to throw you a “Saving the World” party. A minor detour on the way to the party (drinking and magic don’t mix) serves as a very basic tutorial to Magicka‘s unique spell casting system.
Mag
icka has a very action based casting system. All of your spells are made up of a combination of the 8 different elements. Elements such as life and shield are predominantly defensive. Lightning, earth, arcane, and fire make up the majority of your offensive casting. Water and cold don’t do as much on their own, but they can be deadly when combined with other elements.
Not only can elements be mixed together to change the way they will behave, but they can be cast in different ways as well. Elements can be cast towards the enemy, on yourself, on your weapon, as an area spell or as a spell from your spell book. It can be complicated at first and experimentation is the key to finding out what works.
Take lightening for example. In most cases you will want to simply cast it towards your enemy. Lightening will jump from enemy to enemy and is particularly effective against foes who are wet. If you get surrounded, you might want to cast lightning as an area spell to hit all of the enemies in your immediate area. Alternatively you can cast it on your weapon, making your next swing deal extra damage. Casting lightening on yourself isn’t all that helpful as it will only hurt you. Luckily mixing together life and lightening will allow you to cast the all important Revive spell, which is absurdly useful when playing with a friend.
The fun of Magicka comes from finding a new and effective combination of elements and casting options. Arcane and fire will create a powerful beam that will do high amounts of damage. Casting a cold shield on the ground will slow enemies that pass through it. Casting an earth shield on yourself will encase you in protective rock.
Suffice to say, there are a lot of ways to hurt your foes and protect yourself and your friends. Unfortunately, the learning curve is a little steep. While you are still trying to get the hang things, you will quickly find yourself surrounded by goblins. While not particularly threatening by themselves, they come in large groups that can overwhelm a new wizard. This is especially true if you accidentally send off the occasional healing beam towards your foes. Mobility is important, but queuing up elements will cause your wizard to move slower. This can make it hard to throw spells back at the enemies you are running away from.
While this can get to be extremely frustrating in single player, playing with a friend isn’t nearly so bad. My experiences with actually finding and connecting with friends has been mixed, but most of the kinks seem to have been worked out. When hosting a game you pick a name and optional password. Your friends will look for your game in a big old list of names and then connect. It’s a dated system, but it works.
Once connected with your friends, Magicka becomes a whole lot more fun. There is friendly fire when it comes to spells, but reviving a fallen buddy is only three button presses away. You might die more often, but being revived is much better then getting knocked back to the last check point. You can also heal others faster then you can heal yourself, and you can even combine spells for more effective attacks. Playing by yourself can get extremely frustrating, so try and bring a friend along the way if you can.
Spell casing might be the meat and potatoes of Magicka, but the story is a big draw as well. The world is charming and filled with tongue in cheek humor. There are a lot of Star Wars jokes and the achievement list is one pop culture reference after another. It can be a little too much sometimes, but it keeps things from being too serious.
As of the writing of this article there were still some nasty bugs present. Magicka has the nasty habit of crashing just before boss fights when playing online. While there are checkpoints throughout each chapter, the game only saves once a chapter is completed. That means the entire chapter has to be repeated just to get to the point where the game crashed. I also experienced problems getting stuck in the environment so that the enemies couldn’t get to me but I could still defeat them. This didn’t happen in later sessions, so it may have eventually been fixed.
Despite its shaky launch, there is a lot of fun to be had with Magicka. The unique casting system is a welcome change to the mana driven systems wizards are used to using. Time isn’t wasted managing inventories, cool downs or mana pools. A steep difficulty curve can cause some growing pains, but these aren’t as problematic if you bring a friend. At only $10, hopefully you can find someone to play with you.
GrE Grade: B-
Popularity: unranked [?]
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