Magic: Steam review (Demo version)

I'm running Windows XP SP3 and playing Steam's Demo version of Magic:Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 on an Athlon 2600+ w/ 2GB of RAM and a 512MB AGP (*Edit* not PCI as first thought) GeForce 6200, and it runs like a 15 y/old dog with Hip Dysplasia.

Seriously???

It's MAGIC:THE GATHERING!!! It's a CARD GAME for Pete's sake!!! Even Wizard101 runs better than Steam's Magic:TG. If my experience is anything to go by, don't bother trying to play it on anything more than a few years old.

The game itself looks good. The layout of the playing field is well designed and everything fits on the one screen without it getting cluttered. The cards are colorful and look just like Magic cards, with the exception that they're on your monitor and not in your hand. Then again this IS the computer version so I can't really fault it for that. The UI is very user friendly and I thought it rather intuitive, and I liked being able to mouse-over cards and use the scroll wheel to zoom in, which is how you activate your cards' abilities.

Except...one of my creatures had an ability that if I Tapped it and one Plains Card I was supposed to be able to Tap an opponent's card. Despite having a Plains Card untapped I was not able to access this ability. I wanted to Tap my opponent's sole Untapped Creature so he couldn't defend but the game pushed me straight from the Play a Land phase into the Attack Phase. Attacking with that card (a 1/1) was certain death as the Computer opponent had a 4/5 Defender. Instead I was forced to wait, then Block him (& die, but not lose Health) instead of being able to Tap his Attacker first. I still won that particular match but it was literally a "sudden death" game where I won with just 1 HP left.

That leads me into something I really didn't like: the Tutorial.

I played the Tutorial just to get an idea of how the UI worked (although as I said it was fairly intuitive), and I did not like how the Tutorial frequently forced me to Attack immediately after drawing a Card from my Deck. Before I even played a Land card the Tutorial insisted I Attack.

Now in my books the correct order of play is Untap any Tapped Cards, Draw a Card, play a Land (if you have one), summon creatures/cast spells/play Equipment, etc., THEN Attack. And I find that a very logical order in which to do things.

Why? You might have a creature with Haste, which does not suffer from Summoning Sickness. If you Attack prior to Summoning your Creatures then this particular Creature cannot make use of its Haste ability, and as the only time Haste comes into play is the Turn in which a Creature is summoned it seems extremely stupid to summon it AFTER Attacking.

No! You can't play a Land right now. OR Summon that creature. Why Not? Because I told you to Attack! Stop clicking that damn Land card!

So -1 points for poor AI/programming.

How many points is that? -1? Huh. That can't be right, because aside from the stupid lessons taught to you in the Tutorial, Steam's Magic:TG actually seems like a decent game, or it would be if I was playing it on a machine which could run it smoothly. That's probably my biggest complaint. It's a card game, and yet it seems to require a reasonably new machine in order to run smoothly.

The Full Version of the game on Steam costs $10. Would I pay that for it? I don't know. Probably not. That $10 would buy me 3 Boosters of real Magic cards, and I'd buy them before buying the Steam version of the game. I only downloaded the Demo version to see what it was like. Would I pay $5 for the full version? Yeah, I probably would, but only after buying a $500 PC that will actually run it :D

*EDIT*
I installed the Demo on my other PC, which is now the wife's PC. It's a dual core Athlon 4200+ and like my archaic PC it's also running Windows XP SP3 with 2GB of RAM, but unlike the older box it's equipped with a GeForce 8800GT. On this rig the Magic:Plainswalkers Demo runs as smooth as silk.

I need a new PC.