Magicka

[ShadowOTE]

Anyone else playing Magicka? It's kinda absorbing all my free time for now... very addictive. Don't think it'll have the long term appeal of AI War (face it - not many games do), but it's got a definite charm to it. That said, the multiplayer issues are annoying... but it's still ridiculously fun. It looks like it should keep my attention long enough to 100% the achievements, which I don't usually do.

For those of you who haven't seen or heard of it, I refer you to rock paper shotgun's article on it: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/24/spell-check-5-mistakes-to-avoid-in-magicka/

[Panopticon]

I was playing this a lot until AI War 5.0/LotS came out. I have only played a tiny bit since then. I can't pry myself away from the best RTS evar for some reason.

I do love the game though. Such awesome mayhem. I don't really think the campaign will have much life for me though. I think I'm going to find the meat in the Arena mode, especially if they support that mode with updates and DLC.

[Ozymandiaz]

I just got it with the aim to test it with a friend ove ze intenrets.

But I am still playing AI War (after a year of AI war actually... )

[Panopticon]

Over ze internets is pretty broken for the most part. I've heard people are having success with games over Hamachi. Some people are playing online just fine though, so ymmv. It's a good game, it's worth ten dollars, and so far the post release support has been good. They've been bug squashing on a daily basis.

[Spikey00]

Quite fun, although it may be a bit repetitive.  I did the entire campaign with a friend through Hamachi, but it was quite... buggy.  We've had disconnections/desyncs/other problems over the course of its entirety, and in totally maybe about a hundred times.  HOWEVER, it was still a relatively enjoyable experience--I've had a ton of laughs with what we sometimes do.

Although... I really do wish that there was some sort of diversification with what role each player does--or rather, with what unique capabilities that each player had... which was, of course, nothing apart from staffs and swords (which honestly weren't really significant, and dying off-screen meant you lost those anyway).

My favourite spells were obviously the popular QFAAS, both as a beam or area-cast, QQQWE (I think, and thanks Foogs) for crazy water mines that propel anything that triggers them to outer orbit--this was mostly the source of my laughter, and our unique use of QRAASE (I think again) for ice rock things with lightning that would strike anything nearby and explode shortly afterward.  QFAAAA or sommat would also be in relative use, as these were long-term steam clouds with lightning.  Both do upwards of a thousand damage, matching the power of QFAAS, and could be used as a weapon-cast.

One of the most hilarious things I've seen and done was using water mines on Vlad who proceeded to fall over and out of the level during his boss fight.


Arena... that's a tricky one.  I don't think there's enough content here for replayability, as there are only 20 waves on either of the levels, and they've already used up most of the normal monsters during these fights.  Of course, they could create a boss run, but meh. 


Overall I was impressed with the game, being a $10 pricepoint and of course, being an indie game.

[Mánagarmr]

Hilarious idea and well done, but doesn't seem to have too much lasting appeal.

[ShadowOTE]

Those are pretty much the conclusions I came to. I think the game would really benefit from proper mod tools, and ongoing DLC will of course add a ton of neat stuff (with any luck). Once the base game is stable I expect we'll see more from those directions. Arena is awesome, but easy if you play it right and get lucky:

Spoilers:
I have yet to see anything that can stop 16 Arcane-based elementals. They chew through waves like nothing else, and are easy to heal/replace. Even if you actually have to fight the only real threat is archers in large numbers, since it becomes easy to get stun-locked.

I prefer ERDSS for my solid barriers - lasts longer, freezes attackers, hurts them when they hit it, and explodes at the end. Also, EAAAA is hysterical, especially vs the undead. For offense, QFASA is my default, since I can either use it as a beam, area, or cast thunder, and can add some extra oomph easily if i need to.

[RCIX]

Yup, found the demo recently (and beat it pretty quickly). If i can squeeze it into my budget, i'll be buying it ASAP

For offense, QFASA is my default, since I can either use it as a beam, area, or cast thunder, and can add some extra oomph easily if i need to.

Heh, so do I (without the extra A at the end). who needs defense when you can wet, fry, and kill your enemies all at once? Plus, it's got insane DPS output, perhaps only matched by QRQRQRQRD.

[lanstro]

It's quite crash-tastic, but when it does work it's quite good.

[BobTheJanitor]

Good concept marred by bad execution. Not to mention ugly bugs. I'm tired of getting knocked through a solid wall and out of the level to die. I'm also tired of knockback and stuns in general. That's never been a fun game mechanic. So putting a fight on a floating island and surrounding you by enemies that cause knockback is never a good idea. Seriously, did they solicit any feedback on this? I assume it's meant to be played with all 4 slots filled so that when someone gets knocked off to their doom it's HILARIOUS and they get to respawn at the next checkpoint. But I'm trying it solo here, so instant kills are just an aggravation that means I get to start all over again.

And the saving only at certain checkpoints is fine, as long as they're plentiful. But if I quit, I have to restart the whole level? What? Is this 1996? That's just not how PC games are done, guys. I'm an adult, sometimes I have to suddenly quit games to go do things in the real world. I don't like the fact that when I come back I have to rehash the last 10-15 minutes again. It was especially bad on the first level, until I finally got a crash bug worked out. I must have played that god forsaken tutorial 10 times now.

I'm also ambivalent on the spell casting mechanic for the spells that require specific components used in order. Maybe mashing the key combination over and over is their idea of balancing the more powerful magics, but after typing QFASA for the 100th time in a row, it gets dreary.

There's a solid gem of fun gameplay in there, unfortunately to get to it you have to dig through a caked on layer of crud made up of poor design decisions and bugs. At least it seems the devs are actively supporting it and working out the issues, so that's a point in their favor. Still, more beta testing and soliciting feedback from players could have helped here.

[Salamander]

Cossack and I have it, but it took a week for them to patch it enough so we could play without it killing my vent ping and not getting black screens constantly. It still has sound problems, but it's fun if limited. I've never killed myself or a teammate in any game as much as this one! Center mouse button being use your staff function or self-cast and not being to re-map that means every time I talk in vent, somebody is probably going to die. The spell combos are fun and the whole spiel with Vlad was pretty funny too.

[ShadowOTE]

Yeah, anyone who bought it the first week likely ran into problems. Most of the show-stoppers seem patched by now, so as long as you aren't trying to play with integrated graphics you're generally fine

Now all we need is some decent mod tools

[Panopticon]

It's fine until you try to get a full roster of four players going. Then the game desyncs followed by a crash. It's a great game though. I was playing some Arena last night ( the superior game mode! ) and had an absolute blast even though we couldn't get past level 13 because of all the awesome friendly fire accidents. Thunderbolt is a great spell for multiplayer. And by great, I mean hilarious. Just be sure to cast a revive every now and then if you start throwing it around.

[zespri]

Some people report that it's not balanced for single player. I.e. it's not possible to beat if you don't have friends playing with you. Guys, what was your experience?

[ShadowOTE]

The problem is really that they don't have any way to adjust the difficulty. I've beat the game in sp without any issues - once you know the tricks, it's simple. In mp you have the advantage (or disadvantage...) of more players, so you have less to worry about with certain bosses (some of them are pretty quick and take some creative tactics to deal with - mines, lightning, etc). The problem then becomes the fact that enemies are pretty much the same difficulty as singleplayer, so you end up chewing through them 4x as fast. Of course, you can always edit the xml governing what you're up against, but it would be a nice in-game option.