Review: Duels of the Planeswalkers on PC and new Xpac on XBLA

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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Review: Duels of the Planeswalkers on PC and new Xpac on XBLA

PC gamers rejoice, you can now play Magic cards through Steam. Your console brethren have a lead on you, however, in the latest cards and decks.

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RagnorakTres

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Feb 10, 2009
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Yes.
YES.
OH GOD YES.
This news is better than sex.
For me at least. I've wanted to play Magic online for ages now but couldn't afford the software, etc. Now that I have some money and a Steam account, I'll be able to play my Red/White deck of rape against other players, hopefully ones that can actually beat me.
 

Virgil

#virgil { display:none; }
Legacy
Jun 13, 2002
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RagnorakTres said:
For me at least. I've wanted to play Magic online for ages now but couldn't afford the software, etc. Now that I have some money and a Steam account, I'll be able to play my Red/White deck of rape against other players, hopefully ones that can actually beat me.
Make sure you read the reviews - this isn't that kind of Magic game. The decks are all prefab, with some limited customization. It's a lot of fun, and a good deal at $10, but not what you're looking for.

If you want to play Magic at that level online, you want to play Magic: The Gathering Online [http://www.wizards.com/Magic/digital/MagicOnline.aspx]. That's where you get into the full deck customization, tournaments, etc.
 

RagnorakTres

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Virgil said:
RagnorakTres said:
For me at least. I've wanted to play Magic online for ages now but couldn't afford the software, etc. Now that I have some money and a Steam account, I'll be able to play my Red/White deck of rape against other players, hopefully ones that can actually beat me.
Make sure you read the reviews - this isn't that kind of Magic game. The decks are all prefab, with some limited customization. It's a lot of fun, and a good deal at $10, but not what you're looking for.

If you want to play Magic at that level online, you want to play Magic: The Gathering Online [http://www.wizards.com/Magic/digital/MagicOnline.aspx]. That's where you get into the full deck customization, tournaments, etc.
I thought the pre-fab decks were the ones you bought? Because that's the deck I use most of the time, I don't remember the block, but it was an out of the box one. I have a second deck that I'm learning to build with and I'm just about to start tearing the boxed one apart to get at some of the really good cards in it.

If I'm wrong I'm wrong, but I thought that's what the out-of-the-box decks were, the "decks" that the Planeswalkers (or else natural forces, like with the Slivers) used in the books.
 

Jared

The British Paladin
Jul 14, 2009
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Heh, intresting. It makes me think about the Yugioh Virtual consoles that I have seen about...I am sure though this is welcome for Magic players though! Offers another route to play!
 

Pinstar

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Jul 22, 2009
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Virgil said:
RagnorakTres said:
For me at least. I've wanted to play Magic online for ages now but couldn't afford the software, etc. Now that I have some money and a Steam account, I'll be able to play my Red/White deck of rape against other players, hopefully ones that can actually beat me.
Make sure you read the reviews - this isn't that kind of Magic game. The decks are all prefab, with some limited customization. It's a lot of fun, and a good deal at $10, but not what you're looking for.

If you want to play Magic at that level online, you want to play Magic: The Gathering Online [http://www.wizards.com/Magic/digital/MagicOnline.aspx]. That's where you get into the full deck customization, tournaments, etc.
I never understood why they would do all this work to make all these pretty cards, animations and program in all the card effects and not let you customize it all. That is the heart of Magic: The Gathering.

Back in High school (and early college) I would spend entire afternoons constructing and testing out decks to try for that evening's magic mini-tourney with my buddies.
 

Kross

World Breaker
Sep 27, 2004
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Duels of the Planeswalkers gives you very specific preconstructed decks. You can unlock them through the single player campaign, and they all have 20 or so cards that you have to unlock by playing the decks. You unlock one card with every win, and you can sideboard any number of the unlocked cards (but not any from the original deck). The game will balance your land around the number/type of cards you have.

I was a bit upset about it at first, but almost all of the decks are pretty decent. My main gripe was not being able to remove color specific cards (like Terror) when I wasn't playing against that color. :(

The expansions all add more cards to unlock for the original decks as well. Along with more challenges, and it seemed some of the old challenges got a second level which added a multi-turn challenge.

Also, I believe you can purchase real versions of all or almost all of the decks used in the game. Including the vampire decks from the second expansion, which is a ridiculous overpowered deck.

(Oh yeah, you can turn off the attack animations in the Xbox version as well. My main annoyance is you can't speed up the AI turn when it has almost nothing to do but still manages to "think" for 30 seconds in each phase - and when it decides to auto-skip to attack phase without letting me equip artifacts first if I don't have any other playable cards.)
 

Keava

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Mar 1, 2010
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Well its nice looking and with some supposed depth, but currently as far as MTG games go, there is wonderful opensource fanbase project called MTG Forge which at least allow syou to build own decks and has over 3k cards implemented, only gripe really is AI.

But well, gonna play DotP anyways, i just love those cards.
 

ItsAPaul

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Mar 4, 2009
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OMG this game is so boring if you actually play MTG at any kind of decent level. SO SLOW.
 

Plinglebob

Team Stupid-Face
Nov 11, 2008
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ItsAPaul said:
OMG this game is so boring if you actually play MTG at any kind of decent level. SO SLOW.
However, if you can't find a local group to play with our you don't fancy forking out a load of money on cards, it a decent enough substitue.
 

Krantos

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Jun 30, 2009
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*Cough*you can turn combat animations off on the XBL version too*Cough*

Sorry, but I get annoyed when reviews say things that are patently wrong.

That being said, I think that the game lends itself to PC more then XBL simply from the UI stand point. A controller works best for actions games; when you have to use the analog stick to select things in a 3D environment (or even a 2D) it becomes a hassle.
 

ItsAPaul

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Plinglebob said:
ItsAPaul said:
OMG this game is so boring if you actually play MTG at any kind of decent level. SO SLOW.
However, if you can't find a local group to play with our you don't fancy forking out a load of money on cards, it a decent enough substitue.
Is $200-ish for a good type 2 deck a lot of money to gamers or something? Plus you can get most or all of it back assuming you know how to grade cards and how to use ebay.
 

MrSnugglesworth

Into the Wild Green Snuggle
Jan 15, 2009
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You can turn off the attack animations for XBLA version too.


Just saying.


Good review, none the less.
 

TazTheTerrible

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Feb 20, 2010
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Ugh, fuck this game. No deck creation? Seriously? I expected "customize your own deck" to mean actually, y'know, make your own deck. Why else would I play magic? This selection is laughable. I was hoping to get an MTG game that allowed me to play for a fair ammount of money and actually focus on deck creation from a tactical rather than financial point of view, but this is just silly.

I wouldn't have objected to paying a fair ammount of cash, but isn't there any intermediate solution where I can sacrifice the ownership of real cards in exchange for reasonable prices while retaining actual deck creation?

I don't give a shit if the decks are good or not, they can be the greatest decks conceivable, I still wouldn't feel any accomplishment because I'd be playing with a deck someone else came up with. I'd like to fight with something of my own creation.

Also:
ItsAPaul said:
Is $200-ish for a good type 2 deck a lot of money to gamers or something? Plus you can get most or all of it back assuming you know how to grade cards and how to use ebay.
Yes it is too much. For one, I don't want cards for just one deck, I want to be able to make several, fiddle with them, try decks that are maybe more fun than actually brutally effective, and I certainly don't want to have to juggle any sort of financial schemes in order to maintain a hobby. I just want to play the damn game.
 

Jackel86

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May 3, 2008
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Everyone's already mentioned you can turn off the battle animations on the XBL version too, so I'll skip that and also point out that you don't play against Bolas' Eons of Evil deck in the original campaign. The final boss in the original is Tezzeret and his artifact thing. Bolas is the final boss of the first expansion, which came free with the Steam version of the game.
 

Lord_Ascendant

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Jan 14, 2008
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I dunno about you guys, but I never liked Planeshift as an expansion. Sure the artwork was good, but story-wise and gameplay wise I liked Mirrodin and Darksteel better. Champions of Kamigawa is maybe a second.....but the idea of Mirrodin was cool.
 

TheTaco007

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Sep 10, 2009
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Uhh... you can turn off the combat animations in the xbox version, too.

And I've never had any difficulty controlling it on the xbox version. It's not like the controls are bad, they're just different.
 

Miumaru

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May 5, 2010
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Pinstar said:
Virgil said:
RagnorakTres said:
For me at least. I've wanted to play Magic online for ages now but couldn't afford the software, etc. Now that I have some money and a Steam account, I'll be able to play my Red/White deck of rape against other players, hopefully ones that can actually beat me.
Make sure you read the reviews - this isn't that kind of Magic game. The decks are all prefab, with some limited customization. It's a lot of fun, and a good deal at $10, but not what you're looking for.

If you want to play Magic at that level online, you want to play Magic: The Gathering Online [http://www.wizards.com/Magic/digital/MagicOnline.aspx]. That's where you get into the full deck customization, tournaments, etc.
I never understood why they would do all this work to make all these pretty cards, animations and program in all the card effects and not let you customize it all. That is the heart of Magic: The Gathering.

Back in High school (and early college) I would spend entire afternoons constructing and testing out decks to try for that evening's magic mini-tourney with my buddies.
Its intended to get people interested in Magic who are not. Its goal is to make people want to buy the real cards.
 

TazTheTerrible

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Feb 20, 2010
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Why not just make a pc game that lets you make full use of a cycle/expansion/whatever you wanna call it, for that price of say 200$? I might be willing to pay that kind of money (okay maybe more 100-150), except it might make people question why the hell they're paying several times the amount they'd fork over for an MMO on a game that can barely call itself 2D.

This game hasn't rekindled my interest in MTG, it makes me wanna go back to Guild Wars. This thing isn't a Magic game, it's a god-damn trial you have to pay for.