Magicka: Wizard Wars seems like it should be better than it is. On paper it's a sure-fire winner: take Magicka, with its comical little wizards and huge number of elemental spell combos and counterspells, add team-based multiplayer, and make it free-to-play in a fair and appealing way. So why is the reality so frequently lackluster? It remains a fun game, because there’s something inherently enjoyable about that skill-based Magicka formula, but Wizard Wars shows how a poorly thought-out MOBA-inspired design can suck the magic out of a game.
Developer Paradox North hasn’t done Wizard Wars any favors in saddling it with a surprisingly crude and unstable client. Wizard Wars may bring back some unwelcome memories of Magicka 1’s famously rocky co-op: half my attempts to join a session have ended in crashes or matchmaking failures. I've sat in a game lobby for several minutes, watching fellow players flicker in and out, resetting the countdown timer each time they reconnect. When a game ends, you get a fleeting glance at the score screen before "CONNECTION LOST" pops-up and you're dumped back to the main menu. Or the desktop, depending on how Wizard Wars is feeling that day.
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Developer Paradox North hasn’t done Wizard Wars any favors in saddling it with a surprisingly crude and unstable client. Wizard Wars may bring back some unwelcome memories of Magicka 1’s famously rocky co-op: half my attempts to join a session have ended in crashes or matchmaking failures. I've sat in a game lobby for several minutes, watching fellow players flicker in and out, resetting the countdown timer each time they reconnect. When a game ends, you get a fleeting glance at the score screen before "CONNECTION LOST" pops-up and you're dumped back to the main menu. Or the desktop, depending on how Wizard Wars is feeling that day.
Continue reading…
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