Review of Microprose's Playable Demo
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by Innate Mak
Demo Specs The demo can be downloaded from here. The required files are 14 MB compressed, 46 MB total. If you have a 14.4 modem, forget about getting it -- unless you don't mind waiting half the day. . .
To run the demo, you need at least :
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Microprose has rcently released a playable demo to their much awaited Magic: the Gathering PC game. The full game is supposed to have two parts, a dueling section, and a interactive adventure section. This demo features only the dueling section.
The demo comes in two modes, "Gauntlet", and "Single Duel". The gauntlet mode is sort of like a tournament; you start against one deck, and proceed until you face the "best" deck. The Single Duel mode allows you to play against a chosen opponent/deck. Both you and the computer plays with the 5 pre-assembled decks. As you have probably guessed, there is one deck for each color. Black has the "Swamp Thing" deck, which is basically a swamp-walk/zombie deck. Blue has a deck called the "Ethyl Merman". This deck partly revolves around Merfolk of the Pearl Trident and the Lord of Atlantis, but also has other cards such as Djinns, Zephyr Falcons, Lifetaps, and Hacks. Green's deck is called "Wolflings". I'm not sure how they came up with that name, since this deck doesn't seem to have much of a theme. It has a wide assortment of green creatures, everything from Whirling Dervishes, to Killer Bees, to Aswen Jaguars (a new special card to the set). Red has the classic burn deck, appropiately called "Dante". It's based around direct damage, and mass destruction such as Earthquakes and Infernos. It does have a few creatures, such as Stone Walls and Dragon Whelps. Finally, white gets an interesting deck called "Eggscalibur". It's a combination of White Weenie, with Armageddons and Dingus Eggs thrown in for good measure. Amazingly, the AI for the game was well done; on an easy setting, the AI tended to do really stupid things, like when I had two vices on it, and instead of wasting a bolt on me to reduce the vice damage, it holds on to it until I can get out a creature. On the other hand, the medium-hard settings had the AI play quite intelligently (in fact, it beat me a few times!) My only problem with the game was that it ran really slow on my computer (unfortunately, it's only a 486)... in fact, one normal game against the computer took almost 5 times longer than it would have taken against a human opponent! However, when played on a Pentium, the game ran smoothly, though still slower than what a normal game would have taken. This is mainly because the game steps through each and every phase, and after a while, this gets a little tedious. Speaking of tedious, the game's current system of tapping each land individually for mana gets annoying after a while. I sure hope they devise a way to tap land for mana faster than it takes now. Overall, this demo was quite a treat, and it definitely made me interested in getting the full product. The newest release date is February 1st, and this time, this date seems to be pretty solid. I can't wait!! |
Copyright © 1996 Beyond Dominia.
Magic: the Gathering is a Registered Trademark of Wizards of the Coast
