APPROACH THE EYE

[Kitsune]

I got Eye of Judgment today and have been pleasantly surprised by it.  I went in thinking, "Well, the game's probably half-assed, but at least I'll get a good webcam out of the deal." and wound up having a fun time with it.  It's definitely not up with Magic on the complexity scale, but it had ample depth to make me have to sit back and ponder on a few of my turns.  The whole camera & mat gimmick worked smoothly (once I fiddled with the settings to make the camera recognize the cards in my not-brightly-lit living room) and the act of laying down cards definitely felt more enjoyable than just using the control pad.

The problem is that the documentation sucks.  Hard.

On my first play against the computer, I put down a monster, the monster attacked his monster, the turn ended.  Next turn, I put down another monster, and the first monster sits on its ass and does nothing.  "What the hell?", think I.  A quick consultation with the instructions mentions that mana must be paid to activate the monsters in turns after their summoning, and I was out of mana.  "Aha," I think, "he'll attack on a turn when I have more mana."  Next turn comes, mana goes up, monster still does nothing whatsoever.

After some frustrating trial and error, I worked out the process: You place the activate card on the monster that you want to act.  Then, if you're using a targeted ability, you place the activate card on the target.  If you want to turn your monster, that counts as an activation as well, but you don't use the activate card, you reach down and turn the monster card.  And some activated abilities, like sacrificing a creature to summon another creature, involve just removing the old creature and putting the new one in its place.  None of these things are actually mentioned anywhere in the fucking manual.  I seriously wanted to mail whomever wrote the manual a punch to the balls for leaving out reams of important information.

Once I got into the swing of things, though, I was having a really good time of it.  I have a giant hardon for turn-based strategy, however, so the game was pretty squarely aimed at my demographic from the get-go.  Turn-based strategy and card game lovers with PS3s would do well to get this, people who are disgusted by turn-based stuff would probably want to give it a pass or see it in action before plunking down the cash.

The thing comes with a prebuilt starter deck and one booster pack; the starter deck is already set up for play in the game and I didn't bother with fucking around with the cards on my test runs tonight.  Now that I have an inkling of how to play, I'm gonna see about grabbing some boosters.  I realize that in about ten minutes you'll be able to find high-res scans of every card online and just print out the cards for free, but if everyone does that and nobody actually buys the cards the suits will declare the game a failure and pull the plug on expansions, so I think of this as me doing my part to contribute to the game's future.

I have yet to try any online play with the game, primarily because I don't really care to be 'that guy' who actually tries to play against others with a starter deck, but initial accounts seem to be fairly encouraging about the ease of network play.  Some people are reporting disconnection issues, though it's hard to say whether it's a flaw in the game or some people are just having a bad ISP day.

Oh, and Protip: Iron the cloth mat to get the creases out of it.  The camera was not having a good time at scanning the cards thanks to the creases in the mat having them at weird angles.  The card scanning improved a fair bit once I ironed the mat out.

[Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the background music is retarded.  As in listening to it will literally make someone stupid.  Despite the whole medieval theme, the music consists solely of some guy trying and failing to rock out on a guitar.  Whoever thought that was a good idea should expect a delivery from me, right after I'm done with the manual guy.]

[schild]

The background music is awesome.

And yes, the documentation is the worst. 3 games of trial and error and we had it down though.

Protip: 50hz, dark room. Fixes any problem with shadows and the map.
Protip 2: The starter deck has 34, not 30 cards. You need to take out 4 or else it won't flow right. Leave all 4 action cards in there.
Protip 3: You're not imagining it, they lifted a lot of the best shit from MtG.
Protip 4: Kitsune! Let's play this weekend!

[Velorath]

Protip:  Sites (ok Kotaku, but someone linked to there, it's not like I was reading the site or anything) are reporting that even cheapass printers can reproduce the cards well enough for the Eye to scan and register them.  I'd laugh at Sony and WotC apparently not bothering to check this kind of thing, but in the case of a fairly original game like this, it will be disappointing if some careless shit like this causes the game to fail.

[BigBlack]

Glorious.  MtG is the kind of game I'd be interested in going back to if the 'card collecting' aspect of it were completely eliminated.  Buy the entire set, 4 of every card, for 50 bucks, perhaps, and then run booster drafts (infinitely more interesting than constructed IMHO) with your friends.  If some run of the mill piracy enables Eye of Judgment to attain the same ease of access, well, I'll feel about as bad about that as with the next MP3 I download.  I'd feel more guilty, perhaps, if there were some sophisticated encryption being cracked here -- but if this is just something they didn't think to check for, well, at some point I'm willing to capitalize on the stupidity of faceless corporations without worrying about what it does to their bottom line.

[Yegolev]

/faceslap

[HAMMER FRENZY]

Glorious.  MtG is the kind of game I'd be interested in going back to if the 'card collecting' aspect of it were completely eliminated.  Buy the entire set, 4 of every card, for 50 bucks, perhaps, and then run booster drafts (infinitely more interesting than constructed IMHO) with your friends.  If some run of the mill piracy enables Eye of Judgment to attain the same ease of access, well, I'll feel about as bad about that as with the next MP3 I download.  I'd feel more guilty, perhaps, if there were some sophisticated encryption being cracked here -- but if this is just something they didn't think to check for, well, at some point I'm willing to capitalize on the stupidity of faceless corporations without worrying about what it does to their bottom line.

Man I agree with this so hard. I love magic but I hate card rarity. I would like equal accessibility to all the cards. I would love if all CTCG lost the "C&T". This would make me play much more often.

[schild]

I would like equal accessibility to all the cards.

Ruins the game.

[Velorath]

I would like equal accessibility to all the cards.

Ruins the game.

If the game has no limits on how many of each rare card can be in a deck I agree.  Otherwise, it mostly ruins the game for the people with the most disposable income, as well as the chances of new sets of cards being released until WotC can come up with a fix.

[squirrel]

I would like equal accessibility to all the cards.

Ruins the game.

If the game has no limits on how many of each rare card can be in a deck I agree.  Otherwise, it mostly ruins the game for the people with the most disposable income, as well as the chances of new sets of cards being released until WotC can come up with a fix.

Disposable income - or a good printer. Or a crappy printer.

[Fabricated]

Well, considering the cards are identified visually it kinda makes sense that the cards can be copied. Duh

[squirrel]

Well, considering the cards are identified visually it kinda makes sense that the cards can be copied. Duh

For sure. Kinda fucking breaks the whole revenue model of booster packs though dontcha think?

[Hoax]

You realize of course that this just means the 2nd set will come out with card quality/tech that can't be reproduced for shit, most likely at increased cost to consumers.  There will also be MASSIVE power creep rendering all cards from the basic set useless in comparison.

YOU HEARD IT
HERE
FIRST

chika-chika-wuuuuu

World still turns, corps are still money grubbing fuckers, pirates still > ninjas unless said ninjas are stealing shit, in which case rock on my black-clad brothas.  God fucking damn I hate Fridays @ work...

[Kitsune]

I really don't care about people scanning and printing the cards.  An idiot with good cards is still going to lose.  It's mildly annoying to think that the super-rare phantom card I found today will be common as dirt in a week, but I have no particular fear that the other players will become more formidable for it.

In other news, I've added you to my friends list on PSN, Schild.  Accept the invitation so that your savage beating may commence.

[squirrel]

You realize of course that this just means the 2nd set will come out with card quality/tech that can't be reproduced for shit, most likely at increased cost to consumers.  There will also be MASSIVE power creep rendering all cards from the basic set useless in comparison.

YOU HEARD IT
HERE
FIRST

chika-chika-wuuuuu

World still turns, corps are still money grubbing fuckers, pirates still > ninjas unless said ninjas are stealing shit, in which case rock on my black-clad brothas.  God fucking damn I hate Fridays @ work...

I think that'll be hard given the low res and scanning process of registering the cards with the Eye camera. Although they could do it by literally encoding each card with a totally unique serial number of sorts and then keeping track of them allowing only 1 registration. Not sure if PSN has that kind of capability. You're probably right, although it depends also on the success of the game. No point in investing the effort if it's a flop.