“How did you do those glowing spikes?”
“No idea, it was an accident.”
“Maybe some earth and shield and arcane… No, I just blew myself up.”
“Some earth, water, cold, shield, arcane? Maybe steam? Aaaand I blew myself up as well.”
Magicka is an isometric action-adventure game where players take on the roles of wizards in order to defeat a nefarious member of their brethren. According to the story you need to defeat Grimnir, and ancient evil sorcerer who wants to destroy the world for reasons. You are aided in your quest by Vlad, a master in your academy of magicks, who is most definitely not a vampire. You will travel to different cities, face various foes, fight bosses and most importantly, explore magic.
The Good
Magicka is a hilarious game. It is full of pop-culture references, it makes fun of videogames, you will see plenty of Star Wars jokes, and references to other movies like 300 and James Bond, and various videogames of course. The first sentence of the game is “Stay awhile and listen.”. It also makes fun of videogame tropes like the compulsory rats in the cellar quest, floating exclamation marks above the NPCs heads, or the inventory system. The characters of Magicka’s world speak a made-up Scandinavian language. It seems to be a combination of Swedish and mispronounced English, and it makes every scene funny.
The gameplay is simple yet complex. There are no classes, not much gear, no talenting. You have 8 basic elements (water, life, shield, cold, lightning, arcane, earth and fire) at your disposal, and in order to progress through the game you need to combine these into spells. You can make shields, slow down time, summon thunderstorms, make traps, speed yourself up, create deathrays, and the list goes on and on. The game will teach you some combinations, you can also google them, so each fight will consist of frantic button mashing on your keyboard to get the spells out as quickly as you can. For example, this is a good way to start a fight: “REASFQFASA”. Try not to google everything, only use the internet in moments of desperation, don’t rob yourself of the excitement of finding new spells. Because this is the heart of the game. There is no major loot, you won’t find super powerful staves and robes, you can pick up some items, but their contribution to your damage is minimal. It is all about the spells.
At the beginning your fights will be a mess, you will keep hitting the wrong combos, blow your mate up or cast lightning instead of healing. You will create numerous awesome combinations that you can’t ever reproduce afterwards and will keep wondering how the hell did you make that happen. Eventually you will get better, not by a lot, but you will start remembering some spell-combinations and be able to react to certain situations with specific spells.
The music is simple but emotional, it has that nice fantasy ring to it.
The Bad
Based on the paragraphs so far you would expect this game to be a light-hearted adventure, and it is not. This is the biggest flaw of the game. The spell system is unique and awesome but also makes it hard to remember 20 spells and be able to quickly switch between them. Some fights are way too hard when you consider the setup of the game, so you need to try those bosses several times, and this sudden turn to seriousness does not work well with the otherwise funny and sarcastic demeanor of the game.
I can’t really put my finger on what the issue was, after a while, the game felt like a chore. It was funny and colourful and quick and yet it took us a few weeks to play through it because we had to make ourselves sit down for an hour of play and then we had enough for a long time.
The Co-Op
The co-operative element is OK. There are spells that affect the whole party (time warp), you can heal and revive each other (crucial in surviving some fights), and there is also friendly fire, which can lead to some real-life fights. You need to coordinate and strategize before boss encounters, sometimes it will work splendidly, sometimes it will end up being a mess. But that’s okay as long as you are having fun.
The Recommendation
All in all, Magicka is a fun game with some surprisingly challenging boss fights. I recommend it to gamers, who enjoy pop-culture references, are willing to put in the time and effort to learn the best spell combos, and who are okay with wiping on bosses five times in a row.
Info
| Release Year | 2011 |
| Genre | ARPG |
| Difficulty | Hard |
| Number of Players | 1 to 4 |
| Length | 10 hours |
Rating
| Overall | Mediocre |
| Story | Good |
| Co-Operation | Good |