Games for Lunch: BattleForge

In a nutshell: Warcraft + Magic: The Gathering = the most addictive substance known to man?
5/11/2009 6:25 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

Developer: EA Phenomic
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: March 23, 2009
System: PC
ESRB Rating: T
Official Web site

0:00 I was big fan of Magic: The Gathering back in grade school, so part of me has high hopes this will satisfy my long-dormant collectible card game jones. Another part of me is pessimistic that just an hour will be enough for me to really get into it.

0:10 OK, I'm not going to go into much detail on the mess of stalled downloads, frozen computers and lengthy file checks that preceded getting this game's 2.6 GB of files downloaded and working on my computer. Suffice it to say I'm docking the game 10 minutes of play for the mere annoyance. I could easily take the whole hour, because it took much longer than that overall, but I'm not that petty.

0:12 Lots of animated logos precede the title, which appears in a blaze of light and fire amid some purple smoke. EPIC!

0:13 Character creation time. My chosen name, Ace, already exists, so I go with boring old KyleOrl. I can choose from dozens of generic fantasy character portraits -- the elf warrior, the skeleton, the dwarf. I choose one that looks like an exploding supernova -- or possibly an exploding airship. Whatever. On to the "introduction map."

0:16 A decent amount of loading precedes ... even more loading. "The Skylord Moon will guide you through your first mission," says the loading screen.

0:18 "Welcome, Skylord," says a scantily clad female tutor. "The Forge of Creation gives you the ability to bring legendary creatures to life and command them to aid the mortals of this world. To illustrate, I will summon a squad of famous Northguards for you to command." And there they are, appearing on a real-time strategy-style map. Oh, I thought this was a pure card game. Shows what I know...

0:20 My tutor goes over the basic tasks ... movement and attacking with a simple right-click. Now "it's time you summoned your very own army." I have a set of seven Blue Frost and Red Fire cards at the bottom of the screen, each representing summonable creatures or spells, I'm told. Each card needs Orbs and Power to cast, which I gain from special captured locations on the map. Interesting mix of cards and real-time strategy, here.

0:24 I summon some Frost Archers, as instructed, and they slowly wear down a huge Minotaur Shaman that's guarding an Orb monument. Man, this battle is taking forever ... shouldn't it be apparent who's going to win by now? On the other hand, I like that the pace is a bit slower than that of StarCraft, which I can't quite manage to keep up with.

0:27 I try out my Eruption spell on a nearby enemy encampment, as instructed. The card's text explains that "A heavy explosion deals 250 damage to enemies in a 10m radius around its target, up to 720 in total. Knocks back small units. Immediately reusable." All I know is that it causes a big boom.

0:29 That "immediately reusable" of the eruption card is important, because I need to use five of them in rapid succession to take out all the guard and the tower they're guarding. Now I'm summoning some more archers and foot soldiers in anticipation of storming a set of enemy archers that are set up atop a protective wall.