Magicka Review

"Only Goblin Raiders are so precise..." A game that quotes Star Wars in its own fashion within the first ten minutes is on to a winner. Arrowhead Games gives us Magicka, a generic tale of high fantasy and wizardry set in a generic fantasy land using generic weapons. It's also amazingly good fun.

Your journey here involves you, and up to three others playing as wizards on a quest to... well, save the world, what else? You'll be doing so using your innovative Magicks system, where you can combine different elements and spells to create new ones on the fly. While this sounds like fun... it isn't always, no complaints about the system, it is fun, and it rewards failure with unintentional hilarity. Picture playing with three friends, and you're in a rather large battle against some beast-men. You quickly hit the combo to unleash a healing beam at your low-on-health friend, only to find you've clicked the wrong combination and instead dropped a meteor shower on his hatted head. Frustration? No, just go grab his gear and continue, but expect retribution.

Magicka is technically all about team-work, but things can get so frantic on the screen it quickly degenerates into an all out spell-a-thon where colors and shapes are flying all over the screen, with someone healing, someone throwing up a defensive shield and the other two unleashing holy hell on the enemy.

To begin with, you are told in a Norweigen/made up language by Vlad (who is by no means a vampire) that you have to save the world. You are then thrown into a tutorial to get yourself familiar with the spell system and although it's tricky to get the hand of hitting the right buttons, it's intuitive and makes sense, e.g., if you're on fire, use a water spell on yourself, if you're dripping wet, cast fire on yourself and don't use lightning. You can direct your spell casting fury either at enemies, on yourself, or in the area surrounding you, giving you three different attack/healing radius' with three different buttons.

After the tutorial you'll be off on your way to save the world, and along the way you'll learn new powerful spells like Haste, Meteor Shower and Lightning Bolt. The combinations for these can be displayed at any time, giving you access to them when you need them the most. Once you're on your journey you'll come across some delightfully odd characters, including a group of wizards who can't decide which time they saved the world was the most exciting, and a curious man looking at two suspiciously familiar charred corpses, who quips "This looks like the work of Goblins." And yes, we like Star Wars here.

To aid you in your generic quest, you'll be able to pick up new staffs and melee weapons which act more like power ups than new equipment. Within the first level you'll find a mage's staff that looks quite similar to a certain wizard from Middle-Earth.

Your quest will take you mostly through natural outdoor environments, but you'll find yourself indoors at points too, and the graphics on display fit the tone of the game perfectly. It's cartoony, yet simple in its design and all the better for it. The villagers that talk to you in the faux-Norweigen accents and look all the more comical thanks to their entirely unrealistic look.

Aside from the main adventure, you'll also be able to play a challenge mode where you're pitted against all manner of beasties in an arena, where your scores can be posted to a leader board to compete with friends.

If I have one issue with this game, it's the check-point system. The game is by no means easy, especially when you start getting into larger battles and bosses, and the check-point system is unforgiving. If you don't activate a way stone, or come across a natural check-point, when you die you're thrown back to the beginning of the level. The same goes for if you quit the game, if you quit mid-level, when you boot the game up again, you'll start at the start of the level. The levels are by no means long, but it can be very frustrating when you die after a particularly big battle then find yourself having to get back to it, then repeat the battle again, then try very hard not to die.

While not an RPG in the traditional sense (there's no leveling up, and only one proper side-quest, which isn't that proper come to think of it...) Magicka is a superb game, both in terms of humour and the magic based gameplay. Add three friends into the mix and you will have hectic, hilarious games afoot. The voice acting is superbly fake, the story is lovingly ripped off from every RPG and geektastic thing ever invented, ever, and the spell casting itself is fantastic.

If you have even a passing interest in RPG's you'll be able to understand most of the humour on offer here, even non-RPG'ers will be able to get some laughs (see afore-mentioned Star Wars quotes for examples). Highly recommended. Bring your own wizards sleeve jokes, and remember, "The safe word is BANANA."