The first game of the Magicka series, released in 2011, was remembered by many primarily by the huge number of bugs, but at the same time offered players an exciting cooperative gameplay for four. The Swedish studio Arrowhead Game Studio, which is responsible for the first part, retired, and its place was taken by the tiny Pieces Interactive development team. The Sony PlayStation 4 game console first appeared in the list of available platforms, the version of the game for which I was able to try it out for myself.
The plot of Magicka 2 continues the story of the first game (although some sources claim that it is a prequel). Everything has changed in this magical world, when magicians, reveling in their power, started a war among themselves. As a result, they almost completely destroyed each other. The survivors either went insane or retired to places far from human habitats. The Prophet Nostrir predicted the coming of the great sorcerer, who will unite all the forgotten magical elements and bring peace and tranquility to the life of the inhabitants of Midgard. It is the main character (or the main characters) who will have to find this messiah.
In fact, as in the case of the first game, the plot is secondary here, and in the foreground is an interesting gameplay. Before us is the very case when you will be bored and incredibly difficult to play alone, so it is better to call from one to three friends and complete the game with them. I played on the PlayStation 4 console, so I gave the second gamepad to my younger brother. Together with him, we learned the tricks of magic spells and cracked down on hordes of monsters of all colors and stripes. Playing the four of us is probably even more interesting, but I only had two game controllers available.
From the game, do not expect any inventory, complex systems of alchemy and other bells and whistles. The mantle and the magic staff will allow you to change from time to time, but to sense them as a goat milk. There will also be artifacts in the game that slightly change the gameplay, but this is rather an unobtrusive addition, rather than a serious gameplay element. There is nothing superfluous, only you alone with the most diverse magic. You have to go through a long and difficult training, during which the game will teach you to combine various magical elements with each other.
These combinations look like this: combine water and fire, get steam at the exit, combine fire and stone - get hot lava, frost and water will allow you to launch a piece of ice into the enemy. You can combine up to five different elements at the same time, while everything is extremely logical and remembering the combinations is not so difficult. In time, you will discover more and more new combinations. In the second part of the game, it became possible to install them on “quick keys” in order not to weave fingers into knots, trying to call on another element to help.
There are various tricks in this game that allow you to significantly simplify your life. For example, sooner or later you will find that the rays of magic can be crossed against the taboo "Ghostbusters." And if you cross the rays of life and death, it will produce an explosion of tremendous destructive power, literally sweeping opponents out of your way. But to get the hang of doing it with not the easiest control is the same task. Therefore, you will have to practice a lot before you start getting everything right the first time.
With all this, it should be remembered that in the game no one has canceled “fire by fire”, so you have to carefully aim, throwing fireballs at enemies or sending a snowstorm in their direction. There is a risk that you will inflict not only villains, but also your comrades. Occurring on the screen at times reminds an insane feast of special effects, but in reality, after all, this is a very exciting and fun game for a friendly company.
Now that I did not really like it. Bugs are found, but not as often as in the first game, which pleases. Several times my character fell into the wall. It is unpleasant, but what can you do now? I was also somewhat strained by the game interface. It seemed to me too cumbersome and blocking almost the entire bottom of the screen. In the process, this greatly hinders and does not allow to see what happens behind the images of the spells assigned to the buttons of the gamepad.
Humor in the game at the height, as they are ridiculed by popular cultural phenomena of our day, game clichés and various aspects of our life. You will meet characters from various video games, books, films and TV series. Of course, they are called somewhat differently so as not to violate other people's copyrights, but you can easily recognize, for example, John Snow from Game of Thrones, who stands on a tiny ice island and is waiting for winter to come. Training stuffed-masochist asks him to pour more and more. And the character Vlad, who seems not to be a vampire at all, convulsively hides bloodless corpses of villagers from the main characters in the bushes. I had the distinct feeling that the jokes of this game are in the spirit of the books of the writer Terry Pratchett who recently left this world.
The game is very short, so a great review about it will not work with all my desire. You can pass it for 5-6 hours, and if you are comfortable with the game mechanics, then even faster. But this does not detract from the other advantages of Magicka 2. In front of us is a really exciting cooperative isometric action with tons of witty jokes and a unique atmosphere. It is very complex and multifaceted, and a huge number of different combinations of magical elements will provide you with a large field for experimentation.
Pros:
- An interesting gaming setting.
- Great humor in the spirit of Pratchett.
- Fascinating cooperative gameplay.
- Much less bugs than in the first part.
- Magic has become more convenient thanks to the "Hot Keys".
Minuses:
- In fact, the game is nothing new.
- Playing alone will be boring.
- Short game duration.
- Not the best interface.
- Very high complexity.
Well, the second part of Magicka I definitely liked more than the first. But, if you think about it, the game can offer practically nothing new to us. Despite a number of shortcomings, I would like to put this game 7 points out of 10 . Let's hope that the third part of the adventures of magicians-stupid will be able to cheer us even better and bring something new and original to our own unique genre of “magic action-comedy”.
The article is based on materials .
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