Magicka: A mad, mixed bag of tricks

Ahh, cosplay. There’s nothing I like more than putting on my robe and wizard hat, striding round the Queen’s Lawn and waving about my enormous magical staff, casting spells of such power that mere mortals can only gasp in awe. Then, some killjoy policeman arrests me for public indecency, or something like that.

Oh right, this is a review, my bad. So, Magicka. Magicka is a… well, I’m not quite sure what genre it fits into, but action-adventure/quasi-RPG probably does it justice. Developed by Arrowhead Game Studios, Magicka is one big parody from start to finish, satirizing RPGs and drawing heavily from a variety of cultural references including, but not limited to: internet memes, the Zelda game series and the British classic, Monty Python.

I’m not usually a fan of RPGs, in much the same way that I’m not the world’s greatest fan of strychnine, so I was initially a little hesitant to start playing Magicka. However, I am nothing if not open to new games and genres, so I decided to give it a sporting chance, donning my wizard robe and hat to get into character before loading it up.

The game revolves around combining eight different magical elements – Water, Cold, Lightning, Arcane, Earth, Fire, Life and Shield – into spells. These elements can be cast alone or, for greater effect, combined in different and interesting ways. For example, Fire will cast... well, fire, but combine Fire and Water and you get their proud bastard child Steam. Likewise, the Earth element fires off boulders but combine it with Fire and you get FIREBALLS.

There are also Magicks, which you ‘learn’ by finding spell books scattered about the land. These are not regular attacks, but special elemental combinations that have to be cast with a separate button for a special effect. For example, Life and Lightning will combine to resurrect fallen comrades, and Water and Steam will summon a temporary rainstorm. The driving force behind the game is very much the discovery of all the different elemental combos, with a generic ‘follow a linear pathway and kill the evil boss’ – which in itself satirises most other RPGs – binding everything together.

Magicka feels very much a game for people with a lot of enthusiasm and time to spend exploring its every nuance, spell and secret area, because there are a lot of them. The few hours I could snatch playing it were far from sufficient to explore every spell combo and in the end I pulled a Darth Sidious and spammed forked flaming lightning everywhere like it was going out of fashion.

This brings me very neatly to my first gripe. You may have a huge array of spells to pick from, but when a group of goblins/wizards/golems/resurrected skeletal warriors are bearing down upon you, there’s no time to summon up fancy spells or Magicks – you pick the simple yet effective stuff and spam it relentlessly. This problem only intensifies when the screen is visually cluttered, and fine control of your spells is nigh impossible. A popup tip tells you that you can see what spells others are casting and use that information against them, but it’s a filthy lie. I couldn’t tell the small floating magical particles apart in the maelstrom of chaos I was embroiled in; it was far simpler to just fry everything with fire lightning.

Co-op mode only exacerbates the problem. Ignoring the fact every server I found was laggy as hell and finding games was an exercise in frustration, I could no longer shoot bolts of burning energy about without torching at least one, or more often, all, of my colleagues, which put a bit of a damper on the whole experience. As someone put it: “Co-op is fun to ‘n00b’ about in.” Finesse is rudely booted out the window and you spend more time resurrecting allies than slaying enemies. It’d take a good connection and three dedicated friends to get me to play co-op regularly and quite frankly, I abandoned all forms of human contact years ago in favour of becoming a heartless jaded bastard (read gamer).

I guess now you’re looking towards me for a recommendation; I really wish you weren’t. Magicka is a very mixed bag. If you enjoy RPGs and want something brightly coloured and light-hearted, Magicka is a ‘nice’ game that would be well worth the green stuff. If you’re like me and RPGs aren’t quite for you, be prepared to invest a fair amount of time adjusting to the controls since you can’t just hop in and expect everything to run smoothly.

Did I have fun? Initially, no, I didn’t, but that was down to the time I had to spend getting adjusted to the controls. Will I keep playing it? I think so. Magicka is a half-decent game that certainly deserves at least a few more hours of my time, and it’s not like I want to get good marks on my coursework anyway!

Magicka is available now from Paradox Interactive and Arrowhead Game Studios.