How do you review a game that you genuinely love, but is buggy(at launch)? In the case of Magicka, you give the developers time for them to patch the game up before considering writing the review. And to be fair, the devs have been patching the game daily. It’s now some what playable(multiplayer). Magicka is an action adventure game with wizards. It’s similar in vein to the old classic, Gauntlet.
Magicka, developed by Arrow Head Games, is a pure action game with witty humour and an innovative spell casting system. I have to admit to misunderstanding what it really was. It’s really easy to mistaken it as a Diablo action RPG clone. It is not. There are no RPG elements in it(other than the fantasy elements and spells). Heck there isn’t even a mana system, which means you can cast spells as many times as you want.
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| The game is pretty funny and ridiculous at times. In a good way. |
Wizard 101
The spell system in Magicka is the star of the show. There are 8 elements, earth, fire, cold, water, life, arcane, lightning and shield. The different spells are mapped to your WASDF keys and how you mix these elements up conjure new type of magic spells. For example, mixing lightning with arcane will give you an extremely powerful arcane lightning magic that is a beam of lightning, very powerful but targets only one enemy. Or maybe you want a fireball? Mix fire and earth and voila! Instant fireball. You can also use the middle mouse button to use spell on yourself( to create buffs shields etc) or shift right click to create area of effect spells.
The combination of spells you can create is quite staggering. I didn’t count, but you’ll be discovering new things as you play the game even weeks in. Depending on the enemy type, certain spells will be effectively over others. Although I expect a lot of people spamming out their favourite spells(lightning + arcane beam and area of effects spells for me). At the moment, I’m obsessed with arcane mines(shield + arcane) as they do a lot of damage and also push the enemies back(great for crowd management). I expect to get nerfed in patches.
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| Yes shields deflect beams! Hilarity ensues! |
Beside the sheer amount of spell combinations, you can also pick up spell books that allow you to cast powerful spells like meteor, thunderclap, nullify(nullifies enemy spells) and other spells(revive obviously will be very important). You use these spells the same way you with with other spell combinations. Select the right combination of elements in the right order and hit space bar.
Coop havoc
Magicka is designed as a coop game, there is absolutely no doubt about that. The single player campaign, adventure mode(which you play through the same campaign in coop) doesn’t scale down to one player at all and a lot of the fights do get very tough if you’re not playing with friends. If you group up, it becomes a completely different experience all together.
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| In coop, beams can be crossed with other beams. |
Friendly fire is always on in Magicka, so you’ll need to be careful where you aim your spells at and the area of effect spells. If you do kill a friend, reviving them is as easy as casting the revive spell(remember no mana in this game). But you’ll want to make sure that you keep your friends alive in tough battles as their presence could mean the difference between staring at the defeat screen or continuing through a chapter.
You could have your friends take on specific roles(non defined roles) like one person exclusively heals, another act as a sniper and use beam spells while another one keeps mobs away by using shield or pushing them away. And if two people use beam spells, they can then cross those beams to make one super mega beam for increased damage! Lots of chaos, lots of fun!
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| Lots of tactical planning and variety in strategies. |
In Summary
Magicka is the type of game that I love. It’s an indie game with innovative features(spell system) and an amazing coop experience. What I don’t like about it however is the technical issues me and many other people will have to grind their teeth on to get to the good stuff. Crashes, out of sync issues and more crashes are just some of the inconveniences you’ll have to face trying to play this online. You could somewhat reduce the connection issues by using LAN(use virtual LAN software) for now. To the developers credit, they’ve been hard at work at trying to fix all the issues(there’s been a patch almost everyday). It’s not quite trouble free yet.
Magicka is a fun, humourous cooperative experience that is a pain to get going but a pleasure to play when it all works out. It’s got a bit of legs too even if it is just 13 levels for now as there is a lot of variety in terms of strategy and spell types that you can try out. And for USD$10, with a committed developer behind it, expect a lot of value from it. Contender for the little game that could for 2011.
Pros:
- Innovative spell system.
- There is a tonne of spell combinations.
- Awesome coop action with lots of accidental friendly kills. I swear, it wasn’t on purpose!
- In coop, lots of tactics to try out.
- Good humour and lots of geeky homages to nerd culture/fantasy tropes.
Cons:
- Still not quite bug free.
- Some spells are just open to abuse(arcane mines for instance).
- Not quite fun in single player and excruciatingly difficult. Obviously not designed for single player.
- Save game system sucks. Checkpoints throughout the game but you’ll need to redo an entire chapter(and a lot of the chapters have multiple tough battles in them) if you quit out of the game.
- No built in VOIP.
Verdict: A diamond in the rough
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