Xbox

Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds

The game that shows what everyone imagines during a Magic tournament but no one talks about. Offering fast-paced, real-time combat that uses spells and mechanics based on the insanely popular collectable card game, Battlegrounds offers a view of Wizards of the Coast?s Magic: The Gathering universe that?s slimmed down without seeming stripped.

Ok, I admit it. I was one of them. I always had a deck in my backpack or in the car, in case someone wanted to play. I battled all kinds of players, both good and bad. I took my share of cards, and I lost my share of cards. And when we played, it could be an entire Saturday afternoon. No, this isn't Pokemon. But this was as popular to my generation as Pokemon is now. I'm talking about Magic: The Gathering. A card game of monsters, mana, and magic.

Up 'til now, video-game translations of collectible card games have been fairly straightforward simulations, such as Konami's best-selling Yu-Gi-Oh! titles, or Nintendo's venerable Pokémon Trading Card Game. But while these sims offer the convenience of an ever-ready computer opponent, and collections of cards that would be expensive enough to require you to sell a major organ to gather in real life, they lack the physicality of the real-world CCGs, which is a major part of the attraction. A simulated deck of cards simply isn't as interesting as the real thing.

Developed by Secret Level for both Xbox and PC, Magic: The Gathering Battlegrounds looks to take the universe and rule set of the popular collector card game and match it with a videogame experience that'll keep us attention deficient gamers hooked. Remarkably we're given a fast paced, quick twitch game that'll have you reacting and strategizing on the fly like a fighting game but you'll also have to have the inventiveness and anticipation used in most strategy games for the PC. Battlegrounds brings key elements of these totally distinct genres together --without one getting in the way of the other-- and this is the game's greatest appeal even for PC gamers who live and die with RTS games. It might be a limitation of the license itself or a design decision, but it also feels like the developers were holding back to keep from alienating the masses of gamers, especially on the console. There's the potential for some grand things to come out of this strategy-fighting hybrid game system.

If you're looking for something a little more strategic to play on Xbox Live, Battlegrounds is a good choice. The popular collectible card game Magic: The Gathering has already made its way to the video game world on a few different occasions. The more successful forays have been pretty faithful to the original card game, but so far, attempts to expand the world of Magic: The Gathering beyond electronic representations of the card game have been failures. Atari and Secret Level are the latest publisher/developer duo to take on the popular franchise with Battlegrounds, a real-time game that takes pages from the Magic: The Gathering playbook but attempts to spin them in a faster-moving fashion.

Converting any type of license into a video game is always a tough task...one that many developers usually do not rise to (see your local game store's bargain bin for more information). Converting something extremely deep in nature -- and with a large dedicated user base -- is an even more daunting proposition. Such is the case with the Magic series, a card game that put one-time small company Wizards of the Coast on the map, and captured geeks hearts all over the nation. Developer Secret Level has attempted to take all that is cool about the card game and jam it into their title Magic the Gathering: Battlegrounds, and while a lot of things in the game work, a lot also doesn't.

I used to be a pretty hardcore Magic: The Gathering player back in the day. I am generally quite a huge geek, and it seemed to fit in with my whole persona, not to mention that it was a fascinating and enjoyable game to play. Then, sometime during high school, all those thousands of first edition cards (probably worth a ton now) went into a box in the attic, where they’ve remained ever since.

The one-player mode is addicting for a while, but then you reach a certain stage that's practically insurmountable. The difficulty should really ramp more gradually. Magic the Gathering Battlegrounds isn't really a bad game - there's plenty of fun to be had despite its flaws. But when you consider how great it could have been, you have to be somewhat disappointed.

Difficile challenge que d'adapter Magic dans un monde vidéoludique impitoyable, peuplé d'univers imaginatifs et passionnants. Le souhait de tout fan de ce jeu de cartes légendaire est concrètement défait par des lacunes trop importantes, empêchant sincèrement d'expérimenter un plaisir à la hauteur. Cependant il pourra convenir aux avides compétiteurs ne vivant que pour l'affrontement magique, prêts à faire fi de manques de finition. Au moins lors de parties face à un adversaire malin, les chargements ne sont qu'humains.

Men när man hört sin magiker skrika "raging goblin" hundra gånger, upplevt det totala kaos som uppstår på arenan och besegrats än en gång av vad som kändes som en slump, då ger man upp. Xbox Live-stöd eller ej.