14 DAY TRIAL // 
I am a big fan of Magic: The Gathering, the trading card game. I like its complexity and the way the tables can turn in just one round, changing the course of a match. I've witnessed great battles that have been won in one turn by the player who was in the worst of situations because of a well thought combination of spells. I've seen how a seemingly unbeatable deck can be turned to dust through a simple counter-spell or bluff.
For those of our readers that don't know, Magic: The Gathering is a turn based card game that sees players filling in the shoes of the planeswalkers, a host of powerful mages, to fight battles by summoning creatures to their help or casting offensive or defensive spells. All of these are represented by beautifully designed cards drawn by various big time artists. Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers is one of the two digital versions of the game provided by Wizards of the Coast.
While it does not enable the vast customization specific to Magic: the Gathering - Online, it has other features that make it more accessible and prone to pick up and play sessions. I've tested both Xbox Live Arcade and PC Steam versions and I can say I was really impressed with how many things Wizards of the Coast and Stainless Games crammed up in the 500 MB that the title will take up on your hard drive.
Magic translates very well to this streamlined version. There are only pre-constructed decks that get better cards as they are used to defeat AI controlled players in the Campaign mode. Magic veterans need not worry, though, as their favorite game was not dumbed down for consoles and retains its strategic depth, even if the card deck building component is entirely missing.
I am not a newcomer to Magic: The Gathering, but I went through the Tutorial and wasn't really happy with the way the developers thought they could teach the game to newbies. The help menu is comprehensive and easy to use, but I feel new players won't learn much from the tutorial portion, as many concepts central to Magic aren't adequately explained. I feel a few trips to the Help menu will be necessary during their first matches against the AI.
Fortunately, the interface is well done and easy to control with both the Xbox 360 controller and the mouse/keyboard combo. There's also a mentoring system implemented that in theory should pair new players with veterans that are supposed to teach them the game. I have tried to employ the system for this review, but during my attempts, I could not find anyone online.
The single player portion of the game has three modes: Campaign, Challenge and Custom Duel. Campaign is a series of increasingly difficult battles against the computer players that will unlock different cards and decks to be used in multiplayer. There is no real story for the campaign, as the cards used come from a different expansion pack of Magic: The Gathering and as every expansion pack has its own story, it would have been hard and useless to actually add narrative. There is some flavor text describing your opponent before each battle and it does enough to set the mood.
The Challenge mode is a very interesting twist to the Magic the Gathering formula. It drops the player in an on going match and tasks them to win the battle in one turn. The mode behaves like a classic chess problem, those where you have to checkmate your opponent in a limited number of turns. The puzzles are well conceived and I can see many hours of fun from thinking how to reduce the enemy planeswalker's hit points to zero.
There is also a custom duel option for those who want to have a practice game with an AI controlled adversary. The downside is that once these missions are done, there's not much to do other than multiplayer.
The AI is pretty well done and can always pose a challenge. It was quite surprising to witness the smart plays the computer controlled players conceived. It did not seem that there was any cheating from that part of the AI during the time I spent with both versions of the title and I have not heard anything similar from any of my friends who own it. The AI has some strange moments, though, but my expectations were surpassed anyway.
The multiplayer component is also solid, allowing ranked and unranked matches between two, three and four players, as well as Two Headed Giant duels (two versus two). Local cooperative play is available for those who own an extra game pad, both for the PC and Xbox 360 versions.
An extra feature that the PC version has, which is not available on Microsoft's console, is Steamcloud. It stores your saves on Steam's servers so that they can be accessible wherever you play. This was especially useful for me. I started a match during the launch break at work, but I was not able to finish it until the break ended. It was very nice to see that when I finally got home and fired up the game, I could load the match right where I stopped it at the office.
The only thing that bothered me was the lack of text chat. While this isn't an issue for the Xbox 360, where it would be cumbersome, on the PC, it would have been nice to have this option for communication with the opponents. Furthermore, there is no way to mute offensive players and a patch that contained these features would be a nice gesture on the part of the developers.
Another nice idea is the ability to customize the background of the menu and the battlefield by choosing one of the five themes inspired by the five Magic colors. The graphics are decent for a small title, with the cards looking as good as their real life counter-parts. The text is easy to read even when not zoomed in, so I have no quarrels with the developers on this one. The audio is nothing extraordinary; sword hit and fire blast effects are there. The music is neither annoying, nor boring.
Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers is a great game both for those who want an easier entry in the popular trading card game, but also for veteran players who want to enjoy a good game of Magic once in a while without the hassle of constructing a deck from nothing. I can easily recommend both the PC and the XBLA versions of the title, as well as both packs of downloadable content available.
