Magic the Gathering - MicroProse A second opinion from Alex van Kaam A review......... well maybe not a review, more like an impression, I would make a review if I knew what I was doing, but I DON'T !!!! But let's start with the beginning, after Sue commented about what a great game Magic the Gathering is in the last Issue of SynTax I came to the conclusion that if it's great for Sue it's great for me, so I bought it. (The above paragraph is just there so I can blame Sue ) Anyway, I bought it and installed it and.................. I was lost, a nice program group was created with 7 entries, I tried the 1st one called "Deck Builder" and I went "eeeeeeeeeeeek", I quickly closed it down. Time to call Sue ........."Hi Sue" - "Hi Alex" - "How are you ?" - "Ooh Fine, and you ?" - "Doing okay thanks" - "Eh the reason I called..." - "Yes ?" - "I bought Magic the Gathering" - "Ooh great" - "well not really, I am totally lost" - "Oh okay......" to make an long stories short, we both loaded the "Duel" game and started it, Sue told me loads and loads of stuff, but by the time I hung up the phone I'd forgotten almost all of it, only her comment about "ha, who needs e-mail or the Internet to play games, we just use the phone" kept hanging in my head....... wonder why ??? But I took Sue's advice and started the Tutorial, and god what fun that was ....... NOT, but I did learn a few things, it was like Sue said, you HAVE to start with LAND cards, it seems Sue knew what she was doing . Back to the "Duel" game, I now "knew" what I was doing, I was ready, my adrenaline was pumping, my nostrils flaring (if that is the right English word)........ my opponent (my PC) drew his cards, I did the same, he drew a land card, so did I ........ I knew what I was doing here, another land card.... hey what is he doing now ??.... eeeeek I just lost 4 points.... I'll just block his next attack, no worries........ eh, I just lost all my cards??? .... well to make a long sad story a short sad story, I lost, again and again and again......... but then I won !!!!!, 2 times in a row...... hey I can do this, piece of cake. No worries, this is easy............. So onto the Game itself.... "Shandalar"....... of course I selected "Novice" and the "Red" cards looked "Cooooool" so I chose that deck, added a nice image, typed in the name of the character and Aragorn entered "Shandalar" and I almost immediately got tears in my eyes from laughing, was this written for a 286 with a Hercules card ?????????? oooh, and look at the movement!!!!!!!! About 5 minutes later I got my act together and guided Aragorn around the land..... to be attacked by a black knight...... ha ha ha, did he really think he could defeat me ??.............. he did..... Mmmmmm...... but the game continued, okay I lost a card, but I was still there, so onto the next duel, another black player..... another card lost, this is no good..... So I pressed cancel and started again, this time Aragorn got a black deck of cards, because black was powerful, I saw it with my own eyes...... Back into "Shandalar" my brave player encountered a Red player..... ha ha, this will be easy....... WRONG again, I lost, how could that be !!!!????....... But I continued.......... to encounter a Blue player....... and YES YES YES YES YES YES I won, I defeated him, ha, Blue were wimps....... so I stayed a bit in this area of the land, killed some more blue players, did a few quests to gain some extra mana/life points...... this was going well, okay okay I did lose a few times, but I also won a few times. There are still sessions that I just lose like 4 or 5 battles in a row, and if I try again an hour later I win them all........ I have been thinking about putting this in a chart so I can determine what hours/how much sun light/what TV show is on at the same time/what direction is the wind coming from are best for me to play, but to be honest I can't be arsed So what is my conclusion of this game....... well it's not a game you play for hours and hours each day, it's more a game you load up when you have some time to spare, I still have no idea what I am really doing, I can do 1 or 2 combinations of cards, but I still see my PC doing combinations that just make me go . The intelligence of the PC is very very good, you won't defeat him very easily, sure you can defeat a Sea Dragon who has 10 mana/life points more then you, but that is more luck than skill, you got some good cards, he didn't....... The end conclusion I come to is that it is FUN, you will probably never finish it, maybe with some luck you come halfway, but it's fun to do. I know I did not say anything about the graphics and the sound and all that stuff, they don't really matter, the graphics of the cards are great, and that is the only thing that matters in the end, that the game looks like it was made 5 years ago for a 386SX..... ok, but don't let that drive you off, the game play is good, not easy, bloody hard at times, but if you put some time and effort into it then you will get a lot of satisfaction back :o) - o -