Magicka

Magicka is an action-adventure game set in the fantasy world of Midgård, where elemental magic rules the land, goblins and trolls are perfectly harmless – well, perhaps not entirely, and all the villagers are wise-cracking smartalecks.

Magicka is a 2-D action-adventure spellcasting game thats utterly silly and pure fun to play. You play as a host of wizards in a quest to save Midgard from an old evil! Along the way, you’ll learn new spells, annoy your friends, and die more times by your own hand than you will by any of the mobs. The graphics are pretty, the soundtrack follows a mystical style, mixed with norse beats of a drum and suits the atmosphere very well. This game shines on its own but when played with friends it becomes a purely amazing, rage filled adventure, worthy of the price tag.

The title screen is a simple show of how silly this game is. Its utterly brilliant.

Jumping into Magicka you will instantly get the tone of the game: humor, wit and satire. Vlad, who is most certainly not a vampire, will explain that he is; most certainly not a vampire. Its the kind of “roll your eyes obvious kinda comedy” and its rife throughout the game. The game functions like a point and click for movement, you hold the left mouse button to guide your character to that point, the character also rotates with the mouse, so directions of spells is easy to control. The gameplay works by you have control of eight elements: Fire, Water, Ice, Earth, Arcane, Lightning, Life and Shield and you can use these on their own if you’re some kind of boring wizard, or you can do what the game really wants you to do: Combine them.

FWOOOSH.

So after learning about the basics of the elements, like how you can’t combine lightning and water because you’d ultimately just fry yourself, you’re pretty much given free control over what spells you use. Over the course of the game, you’ll encounter new enemies who will have certain weaknesses to different spells and combinations of spells and this allows you keep being creative and makes you want to progress. You’ll find books along your adventure that give you powerful combinations of spells that you can cast to rain down meteors, crash enemies (or yourself and friends) to desktop, cause a blizzard and many more. Its such a fun way to play a game; see a huge horde of Goblins coming towards you? Just cast a meteor shower and hit yourself up with a shield and you’ll be fine. Most of the time.

PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC.

Like I said earlier, there are plenty of Wizards to choose from. They’re all (Mostly I think) DLC packs, but you can get them all for dirt cheap now, and they really do expand the experience considering each wizard robe you pick has a different staff, robe and passive effects. One of my favorites is the “Heavy Metal Robe” as he gets a sweet 80’s rocker look, a mic-stand staff and an axe guitar melee weapon. The melee weapons feature with every wizard and are mostly used for last resorts, but can become quite powerful if you put your spells onto your weapon, meaning you can make your sword icy for one hit. Or you can have it have a combination of steam, lightning and arcane. Whichever you prefer.

You can also customize the colour of the robes. I chose black, because all black everything.

This game is utterly fantastic and made even more fantastic by the co=op and multiplayer options. Get four of your chums to get this game and you’ve got yourselves a wizard adventure like no other! I’ve cried with laughter when playing this with Static and others, mostly because Static doesn’t understand why he’s constantly drenched in water and dies when he goes to revive people. The PvP element is a little dodgy; server lag usually means somebody has a meteor spell lined up when you didn’t even see them setup, but its forgivable when one of their own meteors hits them in the face. The DLC quests and additions and tonnes of content. This game is superb.

The loading screens are also amazing. They all feature tips and a sketch of a wizard, usually acting stupidly and holding a sausage on a stick.

Magicka is developed by Arrowhead Game Studios. You can find it on Steam for £7.99. Article written for Spirit Of The Robot by TD.
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