Buy it now: http://www.magickagame.com/
Developer: Arrowhead Game Studios
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Platform: PC (Digital Download Only)
Release Date: January 25, 2011
Genre: Action Adventure
For a mere $10, an absurd story of satire and cliché is unfolded to the players with a unique spell system that has fans of magic, wizards and mages laughing the whole way through. The solo campaign is interesting enough to provide the player with enough entertainment and humor to make the $10 worthwhile; however, the game truly shines when multiplayer is put into play. Despite the faulty connections, crashes, and bugs involved in multiplayer, the developers' ingenious spell combination system works so well that it will keep you coming back to see what other strategies work with your friends helping/killing you along the way.
Source: Youtube Channel Games
Story
A powerful wizard who had an insatiable thirst for knowledge is locked away for his ambitions as it's considered to be too dangerous. Based off of Norse mythology, Magicka follows a typical western RPG sort of story and makes all sorts of jokes and references that pokes fun at itself. The main story is told in multiplayer as it is in single-player. This allows those in multiplayer to experience the same cutscenes and dialogues as those who played solo. Honestly, the whole story can be taken out and it'd still be a great game to play. The journey is separated by 13 chapters stays consistent story wise with Vlad guiding the heroes. But no story is greater in Magicka than those told between friends after playing multiplayer with alongside each other or with others online in adventure or challenge mode. I've heard stories where players try to heal another and instead blow them up. Others where someone summons a lightning storm and ends up killing everyone on their team. One of my stories within the game was a friend was trying to heal us and dropped health mines around him and it exploded and another friend and I flew off the screen and died from it (at least we got healed). The ridiculous antics made by doing crazy experiments using the spell systems is far more interesting to tell than the actual story which I find is much more difficult to create for players, and so I must applaud the developers for providing that even if they did not intend to. Story: 8/10 (C'mon, it's pretty hilarious when someone tries to heal themselves and ends up dropping a chunk of ice and ends up killing themselves).
Graphics
Hmm, I might have to be a bit more harsh on this category for certain problems this game had. The biggest problem I ran into when I first started the game was the amount of graphics lag that persisted for simple graphics on the screen. The environment and models were drawn wonderfully, but they shouldn't demand so much resource and processing power to run. So there's the problem with optimization that made the game lag graphically a lot of the time and eventually made certain games crash (I've gotten the blue screen of death 3-4 times already from playing the game). Certain enemy colors sometime meld with the environment a little too well and causes problems when the game doesn't progress and the enemy is glitched somewhere that matches its color. There are camera focus problems in multiplayer where one player might fly off screen and the camera would focus off screen for a while away from the other players for quite a duration. Luckily, these are all minor problems that the developers have been working hard on fixing. The character design for the players are unique enough for know which character for which player. The lighting effects are pretty impressive as well since they add a lot of depth into the spells. Considering that this game consisted of a team of four people and started out as a student project make this a remarkable feat to achieve. Until the graphic problems and addressed and solved, I'm going to have to mark it down a little. Graphics: 8/10
Audio
The jibber-jabber voice acting has always been pretty annoying in gaming to gives life to characters as dialogue; however, Arrowhead Game Studios took the time to use specific words that have meaning of its own while still have relatively similar meaning to the text. It really does add to the humor factor in the game. Maybe they really are speaking a language and I just don't know it. The music is typical, but sets the mood pretty well. My favorite track has been the one for the title screen/main menu. It's not entirely memorable or catchy, but it's really nice to listen to and creates a certain mode that's appropriate for the game. The sound effects are dead on and work well with the spells and characters of the game. I find the most useful sound to hear is the sound of a player dying (especially in challenge mode) because you know it's time to revive a team mate. There isn't anything I could really ask for more from the audio section of the game. Audio: 9/10
Gameplay
I don't remember the last time I played a game that had such an intricate combination system and have such a nice flow to the game. It is definitely a refreshing break from RPGs where spells relied a lot on mana, stats, and cooldowns. Since Magicka is an action adventure game, the spell casting and gameplay relied heavily upon skill, memorization, creativity, and improvisation. In multiplayer, team work can really help but is not always necessary. Playing multiplayer is really where the game shows off how fun it can really be when pitted against hordes of monsters with 2-4 players combining their smarts together to fight them off. Friendly fire is bound to happen, but my friend and I agreed that it's part of the humor and fun to the game. Things you wouldn't normally believe to happen might happen and surprise you. Though it's possible for all players to use all the abilities that are available, groups of players have devised game plans that has each member of their team take a role like in a RPG in order to fulfill a goal. One player supresses attacks, one slows or freezes the enemies, another charges up for heavy damaging spells while the last one might decide to be the healer and keep everyone's HP up. My friends and I played however we liked and took cues from each other on what to do. It's really exciting to experiment or accidentally create a spell you may not have done before and unleash it for the first time. It might kill your buddy and perhaps yourself, but you get the feeling of "oh, that's what it does, haha." I have waited a long time for a game where creating spells and casting them were fast, diversified and fun to do. Not that I don't like RPG style magic users and cooldowns, but it's fun to be able to cast a wide range of spells in a short amount of time. The developers had their vision set on this game and stuck with it through the end and made sometime amazing. I hope to get at least 50 hours of gameplay out of this. Gameplay: 10/10
Overall
I was planning on buying the game when it had a sale of $5 because of all the games I have already bought over the holiday steam sale in December; however, I got tempted when I saw that the DLCs were going to be included into the game. It looked interesting and had that Diablo-ish look to it that I love so much in RPGs (even though it's an action adventure), but I resisted and added it to my want list. The next day, I saw news over the internet that it already sold 30K, one of my friends bought it, it had a demo and I tried it out, and I heard good reviews from fellow game developers that they played it a lot in their studios and enjoyed it. I am very satisfied with my purchase and continue to play with my friends whenever we get the chance. The game crashes, connection issues, and getting dropped mid-game has been the bane of our experience within the game; however, we're doing our best to ignore it and hope for the developers to fix it soon. If you haven't bought the game and don't feel sure, download and play the demo on Steam. If you like magic-based systems in games or looking for something entertaining and affordable, I highly recommend Magicka for its $9.99 price tag (it's worth it). Overall: 8.75
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