Hardcore Magic-players beware!

User Rating: 5 | Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers X360
Wizards plugged this game in a video for one of the latest PTQ's. I thought the interface looked nice, well-designed and utilizing graphic effects unlike the stale and boring interface used in Magic Online. It seemed this game would be something of a Shandalar-esque game with lots of epic battles and pretty much every card at least in the standard format today. Unfortunately that is not the case.

Duels of the Planeswalkers is a simple and very short game probably geared towards casual players and Magic noobs (to ultimately make these people start playing the IRL cardboard game). The way you play is fine but a bit confusing and it's easy to skip your attack phase for example if you're not focused enough. There is a completely unnecessary timer when you want to end a phase, the reason for this I suppose is because the target audience for the game is casual players. Also you only have a limited time to respond to things happening which there is no explanation for at all. The computer player is ok but will sometimes do extremely dumb things like not attacking when it has the win on the board. The available decks is a real low point, it's pretty much the 10th Edition theme decks and some really crappy common-kill, two- and three-color decks (completely void of any sort of dual lands).

If you are a hardcore player like yours truly I suggest you avoid this like the plague and continue to play on Modo instead.