Magicka

Learning how to cast magic in Magicka is a lot like learning to type. You take it one key at a time, pausing between each tap to consider whether you're proceeding correctly. It's a slow, deliberate process, but it's encouraging because the feedback is instant, whether positive or negative. In Magicka, tapping out memorized keystrokes results in frosty land mines, electric steam beams, icicle machine guns and goblins popping like balloons filled with spaghetti sauce. Magicka would be an easy must-play recommendation if it weren't for a distressing amount of glitches.

Magicka's spell system allows for a wealth of experimentation and gleeful discovery. It's an action role-playing game, but there's very little loot. No experience is awarded for making kills, there's no leveling, and there's no money to collect. Instead, Magicka focuses on combining magical elements to produce dramatically different effects.

Each element is tied to a key. Fire is on F, Shield on E, Water on Q, and so on. Up to five elements can be queued at once before casting. Initially you'll test out simple spells. Ready five Lightnings and you'll be able to unleash a chain shock attack. Shoot with five Fires and you'll get a larger cone of flame than triggering a single fire. Once you learn the basics and and understand the flexibility of the system, it's addictively rewarding.

This is especially true once you realize the game allows for self-cast, area-cast, and forward-cast options. Self-casting Shield puts a translucent barrier over your character. Forward-casting Shield puts a semicircular wall up in front of you to block incoming projectiles and deflect beams. Area casting Shield drops a large bubble over your character to allow you to patch up, block off an area, or protect your allies in a co-op game. You can even imbue your melee weapon with Shield, which can then lance a barrier forward like the exhaust from a Tron light cycle. If you area-cast a combination of Shield, Cold and Arcane and you're surrounded by land mines that knock opponents back, deal damage, and slow movement speed.

Practice and experimentation is the best part of the game. After enough play your fingers will dance across keys with trained precision and unleash healing beams and put up fiery rock walls and conjure rain clouds, summon skeletons and revive fallen teammates. There's a satisfying logic threaded throughout the magic system. If you're wet, a Cold attack will freeze you into an ice block. If you're on fire, you should douse yourself with water. If you're dripping with water, a self-casted Fire will dry you out. Storing magic elements slows your character movement, meaning you can't run around with a powerful spell combo ready to go. Instead, you have to react quickly when a threat appears. Success on the battlefield is a direct result of personal skill, creativity and cooperation.

It is technically possible to play through all of Magicka's storyline solo. The tale is more concerned with squeezing in as many Star Wars, Star Trek, 300, Back to the Future, Monty Python and Diablo references than anything else. Any cultured nerd will get a kick out of the character chatter and storybook presentation, but despite the strength of the humor and gameplay, Magicka is in a rough state. Scripted sequences often break (I watched my character walk right off a cliff during a non-interactive cut scene at the endboss), the game crashes, performance is strangely jittery considering the low system requirements, and enemies will get stuck in the environment. The ubiquity of instant death lava, water pools, and cliffs can make progress tedious given the obscene knockback effects a number of spells have.

For online multiplayer in both the story mode and arena challenge mode, there are more issues. I've connected to a few games reliably, but in others I've fallen through the world's floor, been hit by heinous lag, and in many cases been unable to connect to any games at all on the server list. While playing the chat options are woefully inadequate, offering a text field scrunched toward the upper corner of the screen, which makes coordinating attack and defense with random players problematic. You can play locally with four if you so choose, but if you are going to play with others, I'd very strongly recommend playing with those you know. Friendly fire is enabled in Magicka, and given the beams, bombs, bolts, fireballs and murderous yetis crisscrossing the screen in a four player game, the potential for rage quitting is high as can be.

Source: www.ign.com

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