Review: Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers (XBLA)

Author: Vince | Date: June 28, 2009

The game that started the collectible card game craze of the mid 90′s, Magic: The Gathering, has been entertaining geeks around the world for 15 years now and in that time there has been many attempts to make a computer game based on the game, but with the exception of Magic: The Gathering Online none of them have focused simply on bringing the card game to home computers and have all ultimately flopped. Enter Isle of Wight based developer Stainless Games (of Carmageddon fame), who have finally released Duels of the Planeswalkers for XBLA after the initial announcement was made back in 2007.

Duels of the Planeswalkers is nothing more than Magic: The Gathering the card game on your Xbox, and that is all the game needed to be. Anybody familiar with the card game will already know the rules of the game, which is based on 10^th edition ruleset, and for those that aren’t I would try and explain them to you here but M:TG is one of those games where the rules sound ridiculously complex right up until you play the game, at which point it will all make sense. If you want to familiarise yourself with the rules then they can be found here, and if you don’t want to read them there then you’ll be glad to hear that there is a full tutorial included, an almost encyclopedic help file that is accessible at any time during play and a ‘Mentor Mode’ which allows experienced players to coach newcomers in the intricacies of M:TG over Xbox Live.

DotP certainly offers a lot of bag for your buck, as for the measly sum of 800 you are treated to a 16 level single player campaign with increasingly tough AI, unlocking new decks to use in the rest of the game as you progress. ‘Custom Duel’ mode which alows you to set up a custom match against any of the AI characters,with varying rules. The final single player mode is ‘Challenges mode’ which offers a nice change from the norm. Each round puts you in at the end of a game stuck in a position where no matter what you do the opponent will destroy you next turn. Your task is to kill your opponent in just one round using only the cards you have and the creatures that are already in play, this provides a great way to learn some of the intricacies of the rules and some of the later challenges are a great mental workout. Sadly there is only eight challenges included in the game, but hopefully that will be increased in time with some DLC.

The fun does not end there however as there are just as many multiplayer modes to keep you and your friends entertained. You can tackle the ‘Two-headed Giant’ campaign mode in a local co-op only, which pairs both players up with a shared life pool of 30 as you face off against fourteen teams of two AI players, and whilst the first few of these are pretty easy you will certainly need to have made some serious progress in the single player campaign to unlock new cards and decks to help you survive against the onlslaught that the later co-op levels offer. The ‘Two-headed Giant’ is also available in ‘Custom Duel’ mode, where you select which two AI characters the two of you will go against.

Where DotP really shines though is the solid online modes, allowing up to four players over fight it out over Xbox Live using the decks and cards that have been unlocked in the offline modes. The Xbox Live Vision Cam is also supported so that you can taunt your opponents and watch the look of horror on their face when you catch them unaware with a particularly nasty spell of creature. ‘Two-headed Giant’ mode also makes its way online to allow teams of two players to take each other on in exactly the same way as as the offline co-op modes.

The artwork of Magic: The Gathering has long been one of the games biggest assets and thankfully that has been carried over to DotP with every card having its full 10^th ed. artwork included, but outside of the artwork the games graphics can leave a bit to be desired. There is nothing wrong with the visuals per se, it just feels like they could have been more. For instance when a creature attacks there is a small animated explosion or lightning bolt, etc. depending on the attacking creature. These animations achieve their goal of brightening up the game with some flashes of colour, but they look like they could have been lifted straight out of a PS1 game.

There is one huge gleaming absence from DotP that will have most M:TG fans in uproar, and that is a complete lack of a custom deck editor. This means you are restricted to the pre-designed decks plus the extra cards you unlock for each of them. Sure these decks do cover most bases, but I struggled to find one that suits my own preferred style of play. This may not bother the rookies too much, but as a player of the card game I found this almost inexcusable. This also means that after you have put the hours in you should know the weaknesses of all of the decks when you play online and can try to choose your own deck accordingly, a situation that would not exist if you could create your own decks from the cards included in the game.

If it wasn’t for the lack of a deck editor and the co-op campaign being restricted to local play Duels of the Planeswalkers will probably be an instant 10/10. With any luck these issues can be fixed through patches and further (hopefully free) DLC, and as soon as they do the game should become an instant buy for anybody with an Xbox, but until then it still remains great value at 800 and should be an instant purchase for existing M:TG players, board game junkies or anybody that enjoys extremely tactical games.