Magic the Gathering - Duals of the Planeswalkers Review Microsoft Xbox360 XBLA

Magic the Gathering was the very first collectible card game, launched back in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast, and is one of the few of its type still going strong today. Magic is an adversarial game where two or more players battle it out, each using a deck of 60+ cards, with the ultimate goal of reducing their opponent’s life total from 20 to 0. Players have a number of tools at their disposal; the decks are populated with spells that summon permanent entities into play such as creatures which can attack the other player or defend against aggressors and artefacts and enchantments that grant a range of active and passive abilities. Additionally, there are spells which trigger one-off events before being discarded; these include the likes of simple fireballs that deal damage to players and creatures, counter spells that prevent an enemy from casting their own spells, plus a huge variety of others. Spells are cast using a substance called mana which is generated each turn by a type of card known as land cards. There are five different types of mana in Magic, each represented by a different colour, and spells are divided up into these different groups based on which type of mana they require in order to be played. The player’s deck is placed face down in front of them and at the start of the game they draw the top 7 cards which are then kept secret from the other players; this constitutes the player’s hand and represents the pool of spells available to them at any time. This is then supplemented by the top card from the player’s deck at the start of each of their following turns.
Duels of the Planeswalkers is game that has clearly been put together with a great love for the source material. Loading screens are adorned with full size versions of the card artwork and the in-game tabletops have clearly had a lot of attention lavished on them, each with separate variations for the different player counts. The default table in particular features some great-looking brass scrollwork lining the play area, wrapping round the periphery and encircling the deck locations. The cynical may be a little irritated by the fact that the game only ships with two table styles, the others requiring additional purchases, but what’s there is of a high enough quality to nicely set the mood whilst playing.

The developers have done a fantastic job of integrating what can be quite a complex series of events into a simple to follow and well organised interface, with a clear process flow for the turn order. The triggers can be used to zoom in on highlighted or recently played cards and the process of casting counters and Instant spells (which can be played at any time) works seamlessly through the use of brief timers that allow the other players to step in with spells of their own. You can pause these if needed for a bit of breathing room so there‘s no pressure to throw cards down without thinking things through. This keeps the game running smoothly with relatively little input from players whilst also preserving the rights of any player to slow things down to their own pace.
Sadly, despite the incredibly promising first impression the game gives, at some point during its implementation the developers have made an utterly terrible and frankly baffling design choice. Magic is a game made up of two parts, the first of which is actually playing using the deck in front of you. The second is choosing what cards to put into the deck in the first place. In Duels of the Planeswalkers there is no option to design your own decks. The player is given a number of pre-constructed decks and as they play they unlock a few additional cards which can be added to the deck in a very limited and stringently controlled manner. It’s not possible to remove cards from the base version of each set and you can’t even control the number of lands you take, the most basic modification any Magic player will make to a deck they‘ve been given.

The crucial problem is that the playing of the deck and its construction are so tightly intertwined that removing this one element is also to the detriment of the other. Players are constrained to the small number of strategies that each of these decks were built around; you may be able to see deficiencies in their construction or, all the more galling, actually be losing due to them but there is nothing you can do about it. And some of these decks do have fairly significant issues. Take for example the pure green deck that players start out with, made up of a wealth of large, strong creatures which, while powerful once the game gets going, leave the player very open during the early stages. Pair this up against the green and black deck which has both a fast early game and the ability to almost immediately begin powering up its creatures to an even greater level during the mid and late stages and you end up with a situation where it is nigh on impossible for the mono-colour green deck to win. Imbalances like this are rife throughout the decks and reek of an inconsistent quality to their design. It’s bad enough for the developers to limit deck creation in the way they have but to compound this with a set of blatantly unbalanced pre-constructed decks is simply unforgivable.
The end result is that games become far too predictable and stale. Every time you face an opponent you know exactly what to expect and it takes a lot of the excitement and uncertainty out of the proceedings. A large part of the skill in the real game is in the ability to weigh up the option of playing a particular card at one point in time against that of holding it back for later, an element now entirely missing here. Some of the cards present are also frankly ridiculously overpowered, the kind that would have been restricted from tournament play in years gone by, such as “Reya Dawnbringer”, a powerful white creature which also resurrects one dead creature per turn or “Dread” a similarly nasty black creature who, for a paltry 6 mana, will destroy any creature that hurts it’s owner, whilst being a complete beast in its own right. With cards like this you don’t always need to use your head to win.

These uber cards are typically the last for a player to unlock. Each time you win a match with a deck, be it online or off, you are rewarded with the next card for that deck. A few decks really don’t start hitting their stride until some of these more powerful cards are unlocked towards the end and most of the competition you come across online will be using fully powered up sets, forcing players to grind a deck against the CPU for 3-4 hours before they have something they can take online for real competitive use. It’s not ideal and it would have been nice to allow for match settings that limit the number of extra cards in use so people could play online straight out the gate without being disadvantaged.
Thankfully the multitude of crashes, player disconnects and hangs that plagued the game on its release have been mostly fixed. It can still be a bit temperamental, occasionally dropping players when trying to start a four player match, but overall this is now quite infrequent and generally bearable. The game features a number of modes besides the matches against the CPU and the 2-4 player online. Best of these are the challenge levels which are little puzzles where the player is on the brink of defeat but can win in just a single turn with the cards in their hand. Fans will remember this format from the back pages of the old Duellist magazine and it remains just as fun today. They won’t last you long, with only eight in total, but they’re easily the most enjoyable part of the package. There’s also a 2 versus 2 team mode but bizarrely you can’t partner up with a teammate over Xbox Live; the two players on each team must be playing from the same console.

In terms of its game mechanics Duels of the Planeswalkers is a great conversion of the card game with an excellent interface in place, but unfortunately the heart and soul of the game have been torn out. What’s left is just a shell of the Magic experience; it looks and sounds like Magic, but has little of the depth, challenge and satisfaction that the physical version offers. Ultimately this makes playing against strangers online fundamentally dissatisfying, as much of the time the final result can feel out of your hands. If you have some friends who are also looking at picking it up then you might get a few good nights’ worth of entertainment out of it, but no guarantees.