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Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers will be hitting Xbox Live's virtual shelves tomorrow, so don't forget to pick it up!
DotP is a virtual version of the Magic the Gathering trading card game that will only run you 800 MSP ($10) when it releases tomorrow. Unlike Magic: Battlegrounds, this game will play like the actual card game (not volleyball with spells) and unlike Magic Online, it will only cost you $10 to gain access to all the cards in the game (and not $4 per booster pack). There will be DLC in the future, but they will be one-time purchases that add a number of set cards to your game and not random booster packs.
Here are some of the reasons the Magic players out there should pick this up: -Single player campaign vs. AI opponents
-Cooperative (two-headed giant) campaign vs. AI opponents (Play with a friend in the same room!)
-Online two player, online cooperative (two-headed giant) play, as well as 3-4 player online free-for-all play
-Puzzle mode, which throws you into specific play situations that you must win from
-280 cards available, featuring cards from Invasion all the way up to Shards of Alara
Of course, this game isn't just for veteran Magic players. If you're interested in playing Magic at all, DotP is a great way to learn: -An online tutorial, allowing you to learn while you play
-A mentoring system to provide live assistance
-In-game hints, an in-game rule book and glossary
Of course, the game is not without flaws, but (in my opinion) they're minor ones when I think about how cheap the game is and how much fun I'll have playing online with my Dtoid buddies. For one thing, the deckbuilding is a bit crippled, only allowing you to change a select number of cards out of a number of premade decks. So you can't quite build a new deck from scratch, but you will hopefully have access to enough cards to make your deck play the way you want it to. While this and the limited card pool (280 cards out of 15,000+) may be upsetting to seasoned Magic players, it's pretty understandable that they'd try to cripple the game in order to keep interest in Magic Online (in which you have to buy individual cards and boosters).
Of course, one of the biggest incentives to players of the card game (and possibly to those who want to start playing) is the promo Garruk Wildspeaker card that will be sent out to anyone who buys the XBLA game and enters the in-game code on this page. Garruk is a pretty damn good card (it's a rare that goes for upwards of $15), so you're definitely getting your money's worth. (BTW, I got a few "WTF is a Planeswalker" comments last time I posted about this deal, so here's a link to the Planeswalker rules for those who are unfamiliar with the card type).
All in all, I think it's going to be pretty fun and I'm hoping some of you out there will give a try, too. Be sure to at the very least try the demo when it goes live tomorrow!
I'm very much looking forward to this game and I hope some of you are, too, as I would love to play Magic with my Dtoid buddies. It looks a little dumbed down from the real game (which is to be expected; they don't want to take any steam away from Magic Online), but still a lot of fun. Hopefully I'll be able to put it down long enough when it releases to write a review or something. read more
So, it's Friday night and you're home alone. You had a long, hard week and you're looking to wind down by curling up with a good ol' video game. But what do you play?
Well, I'm sure most of you are already backstabbing and sniping the night away with Team Fortress 2, but there's another option if that's not your style: Infiniminer.
Infiniminer is a free PC game for Windows that can be downloaded here, along with the runtime packages required to play it. Last week, I hosted a server, but ended up falling asleep waiting for people to join. Sad panda. This week, however, I'm well-rested and ready to mine. Infiniminer is all about digging and building in a giant pixel-y 3D world full of dirt, gold, and lava. It may not look like much, but let me assure you: It's pretty damn fun.
How to get online with Infiniminer: 1. Install Infiniminer v1.5, the XNA 3.0 Runtime, and the .NET 2.0 Runtime (if you haven't already).
2. Install Hamachi and join the network dtoid-mines with the password alsococks.
3. Edit your Infiniminer client configuration file (client.config.txt) with your preferred settings (player name, screen resolution, look inversion, etc).
4. Start up Infiniminer and direct connect to my Hamachi IP Address: 5.140.171.140 5. Mine like there's no tomorrow!
Hopefully we can get a bit more activity this week (though I seriously doubt it with the TF2 updates and free weekend working against me), especially since I'm actually conscious enough to help you guys out if you have issues connecting. I've been trying to get the server public so we can cut the middle man and not have to use Hamachi (which would make everything a hell of a lot easier), but I've failed so far, so I'm just going to run it as usual this week. I'm hoping I can get this straightened out next week and maybe get some more people online and enjoying the game with less setup.
I'll keep the server up for the rest of the night, so feel free to pop in whenever you've got some free time or feel like playing something (possibly) a bit more mellow than TF2. Also, I have the ability to save maps, so please let me know if you want to hang on to an awesome creation you made within the game.
Another day, another shameless attempt to get more people in on the awesomeness that is Infiniminer. At least I have a good excuse today: It's Friday! That means that it's time to rock some multiplayer with your fellow Dtoiders, so why not try out something new while you're waiting for the usual games to pick up steam?
In case you didn't catch my last blog, Infiniminer is a free PC game for Windows that can be downloaded here, along with the runtime packages required to play it and the Hamachi networking software that will allow you to play online with the rest of the Destructoid Army. Infiniminer is all about digging and building in a giant pixel-y 3D world full of dirt, gold, and lava. It may not look like much, but let me assure you: It's pretty damn fun.
How to get online with Infiniminer: 1. Install Infiniminer v1.5, the XNA 3.0 Runtime, and the .NET 2.0 Runtime (if you haven't already).
2. Install Hamachi and join the network dtoid-mines with the password alsococks.
3. Edit your Infiniminer client configuration file (client.config.txt) with your preferred settings (player name, screen resolution, look inversion, etc).
4. Start up Infiniminer and direct connect to my Hamachi IP Address: 5.140.171.140 5. Mine like there's no tomorrow!
Infiniminer is a load of fun and I hope to see some of you give it a shot. I'll keep the server up for the rest of the night, so feel free to pop in whenever you've got some free time. Also, I have the ability to save maps, so please let me know if you want to hang on to an awesome creation you made within the game.
A few days ago, I was lazily browsing the internet, trying to find something other than homework to waste my time on. With no decent porn to be found, I spent my time contemplating what it would be like to be a gold miner. Of course, I had no idea what it would be like, so I decided to download a sweet XNA game that would educate me on the ways of the miner.
Infiniminer is a 3D mining game for Windows that handles a lot like most FPSes. You'll use the WASD keys to move and the mouse to aim. There are four different classes of miner, each with a standard pickaxe (for diggin' dirt and minin' ore) and the ability to create a variety of blocks with a variety of purposes (normal blocks for buildin', TNT blocks for 'splodin', and jump blocks for...well, jumpin'). Each class also has varying limits of how much ore (which is used to create blocks) and loot (which is essential to winning the game) they can carry.
Seem pretty simple so far? Well, it is. When you first jump into the world of Infiniminer, you'll be greeted by a fairly large mass of randomly generated dirt and rock blocks that you can dig around in. This mass goes pretty far down and even towers up a bit on occasion, giving you a lot of interesting structures to work with. Of course, you can be adventurous and explore the deep depths of the mass in search of gold and diamonds, or you can mine some ore and build an awesome fortress (which you can TNT to hell when you tire of it). Maybe even a combination of the two! The possibilities are endless when you have such a large space to build on and explore in. Just be careful you don't dig too deep or you might fall to your death (or get toasted by lava, which can surprise you by flooding a hallway when you decide to dig the wrong area).
I've been having a blast exploring and building in Infiniminer, but I've actually only scratched the surface of this awesome game. You see, Infiniminer isn't about wandering around a giant clod of pixelated dirt until you a die a horrible pixelated death. It's about wandering around a giant clod of pixelated dirt until cause your buddies a horrible pixelated death (or manage to collect enough loot to win the game)!
Yes, Infiniminer is all about the multiplayer, which is apparent from the second that it asks for a server IP and forces you to pick between red team and blue team. While I can't say a whole lot about mutliplayer, as I have yet to get enough people together to play a solid game, I can say that it has to be a load of fun to play with your friends online. I actually spent a good three to four hours yesterday playing with a friend over my network, just screwing around on it. I took it upon myself to build a bitchin' underground fort while my friend decided to blow me and most of the map up with TNT. Needless to say, my underground fort transformed into a floating sky fortress within a few hours of play, as my friend leveled most of the map. I had to build a pretty long ladder to get back up there, but it was worth it to hang out in my bitchin' sky fort.
In case you're wondering how this mess of explosions and mining can possibly make up a competitive team game, here's a rundown of the actual game rules (as if anyone plays Infiniminer to win): Teams compete to collect the maximum amount of loot (which can be customized, but the default is $10,000) before the other team does by digging deep and searching for gold ($200) and diamond ($1,000) blocks. Once a player mines one of these blocks, the loot is pocketed and has to be taken to the surface in order to count for the team's total. Of course, each player can only hold so much loot in their pockets at one time, so it may take a few trips when you stumble upon that gold mine you've been looking for (unless you've got some teammates to help you with the hauling). Once the maximum loot amount is hit, that team wins and the map resets, starting a new game. From what I understand, Infiniminer saves the map file each time the server resets the game (I haven't actually completed a game, so I wouldn't know), so don't worry about losing that awesome base from the last game.
Infiniminer is an addicting mutiplayer game that will keep you mining for hours. The game was only released a few weeks ago, so updates to the client are frequent and available from the Zachtronics Industries website. The creator still seems to be working to balance everything out, so a lot of people are complaining when blocks get nerfed in new releases or whatever, but I'm still having fun trying out the latest changes as they're released. Just be sure to keep your old install files in case you find that the newest update isn't to your liking (just remember that your client has to match with the server you're playing on!).
I highly recommend giving Infiniminer a shot if you have a Windows PC (this game is the only reason I'm not on my Linux partition right now) and have a few megabytes free to install the game (along with the XNA and .NET frameworks required to run it). I don't have any specs or anything, but I can't imagine it's too rough on the system requirements, so give it a shot, even if your hardware isn't the latest and greatest. You may want to install Hamachi, also, which will allow you to play online with your fellow Dtoiders.
Don't forget to edit your client configuration text file with your handle, look inversion, and screen resolution settings before starting Infiniminer! read more
I just recently reinstalled a game that I've been playing off and on for years (it's very time consuming) and I thought I'd let my buddies at Destructoid in on the fun.
Progress Quest is a game where you do absolutely nothing. Well, you do have to name your character, pick your class/race, and roll your stats, but after that, nothing. The quest begins and you just use your imagination while you watch a number of progress bars crawl across the screen.
The best part, however, is the ability to take your quest for progress online and compete with others too lazy to play real MMOs for the highest level. You can even create and join guilds!
So, if you want something to stare at and feel as though you're accomplishing something when you could be doing actual work (or playing actual games, even), give Progress Quest a download! If you feel like going online, I'm on the Spoltog server and I've also created a Destructoid guild, so check it out when you have nothing better to do. read more
I got an email the other day from a site called Bestuff that said I had a friend request. Considering the only thing I do with my time on the internet is sign up for hundreds of websites simply because I like Googling my username and getting a billion results, it's not surprising that I had no idea what Bestuff was. Curious about this old membership, I clicked the link.
Once I arrived at the website, I instantly remembered it. I think it used to be called "The Best Stuff in the World," so it's no wonder I didn't recognized the new name. What it is, essentially, is a website where you add items that you think are best in some category and they're listed with other items in that category in order of the number of people who also think they're best. It's kinda neat, but it obviously didn't hold my attention for long, since I signed up for it nearly two years ago and failed to come back.
Anyway, my obvious first search to add some new content to my list of stuff I think is best was Destructoid, as the Best Website. To my surprise, it wasn't even added as an item yet! Not in any category! Outraged by this discovery, I quickly added Destructoid as the Best Website, Best Community, and Best Video Game Blog.
I'm happy to have Dtoid on my list of best stuff now, but I'd be even happier if it rose in the ranks and took first from lame websites like Youtube and Wikipedia. However, to make this a reality, I need help from the BEST COMMUNITY to make Destructoid the very best, like no one ever was.
At the time of writing, we only need a measly 2 more people to be The Best Video Game Blog, a slightly larger 70 people to be The Best Community, and a whopping 1,504 people to knock Youtube off its throne (hell, if we can even hit 836 we'll beat Wikipedia and 769 will beat Google) and be The Best Website EVER.
So how about it, Dtoid Army? Care to sign up and support your robot overlords in the quest for world domination? read more
So, I've recently started playing Phantom Dust for the original Xbox (which, admittedly, I've had lying around for months) and I can't even believe how awesome it is.
If you haven't heard of it before, Phantom Dust is a weird action/strategy/card game mix that is completely amazing in every single way. In the game, you play as an Esper, a person who can use crazy awesome skills to fight monsters up on the surface of the Earth (most of the humans were forced underground because of the Phantom Dust, which erases their memories if exposed to it for an extended period). I was a little confused about how the game was supposed to be so TCG-like until I hit the third chapter, where you get to construct your own arsenal of skills. I suppose you could also call it your deck of cards. :P
When you get out into the action, four skills randomly selected from your arsenal are assigned to the four face buttons of your controller. From then on, three additional skill orbs from your arsenal spawn at your starting location. You can pick up these new skills orbs to overwrite your current ones by walking to them and pressing the button you'd like to assign them to. These orbs will respawn every so often with another random set from your arsenal (kinda like drawing new cards from your deck).
The combat is just as fun as the building your arsenal is, with so many different skills to try out. It's a lot like Magic, where you get all kinds of cool cards and get to pull of fun combos under the right conditions. There are different ranged attack skills, from sword slashes to sniper shots, and different defensive skills that can defend and sometimes deflect your opponent's attacks. There are a bunch of other skills, too, that can erase your opponent's skills or inflict odd status effects on them (like inverting their controls) to really change things up in the heat of battle. My skill pool is pretty small right now, so I haven't gotten to try out any of the really cool stuff, but I'm still having a lot of fun with it.
I can't even believe how similar the game was to Magic after learning about the arsenals and everything. There are five different schools of skill (lol, five different colors of mana) and your arsenal can only handle one to three of these schools (mono-colored deck? mutlicolored deck?). You can hold 30 skills in your deck, but they advise you to leave about half of it to aura particles (lol, land) in order to gain the levels you need to use the skills in your deck (lol, mana costs). They even have a store in-game that you can buy individual skills from (lol, singles) or buy Junk packs that give you five random skills of random rarity (lol, booster packs).
The absolute best part of Phantom Dust, however, is the fact that it supports Xbox Live. You can hit the internets with your custom-built arsenal and take on your friends (one on one, two on two, free for all.....there's even local splitscreen!) or you can place your spare skills (yes, you can get doubles) on the auction block and trade them with others. The coolest part (I think) about playing online? There are something like 74 ultra-rare skills that can only be attained by playing online. For every 30 matches you win, you're awarded one of these skills at random. This makes it a little difficult to collect each of them, but hey, at least you can trade. :D
Sadly, the game is pretty old now (it hit the original Xbox in 2005) and didn't sell too well from the start, so the online community isn't exactly booming these days. The good news about it being so old is that you can buy the game used for nearly nothing (It was $20 new when it came out, so you can imagine how cheap it is used now). It's backwards compatible on the Xbox 360 (which is likely the selling point for most of you) with pretty good emulation, aside from a little slowdown when the environment starts taking a serious beating from all the skills being thrown around.
Anyway, the main point I've been trying to make is this: Phantom Dust is amazing and I think anyone who doesn't hate fun should play it. I also think anyone who plays it should let me know, so we can get an awesome little group together and have some fun online. I would love to take you all on and try to rack up enough wins to get those ultra-rare skills while I'm at it. It'd also be nice to be able to trade each other and such.
I highly recommend Phantom Dust to all of you, so go out and buy it, right now! read more
In the past months, I've become less interested in gaming and more interested in a certain card game (well, I guess it's still gaming, just not the same kind). It makes me a sad panda, but I've been extremely disinterested in all the new releases that everyone seems to fall in love with. I think I've just been in a bit of a slump lately, so I'm hoping a great game will come along soon and help me get back in the swing of things.
Until that happens, I'm going to embrace Magic: The Gathering as my savior from exhausting college classes that require me to wake up at 6:30 in the morning. As most of you probably know, Magic is a trading card game. It involves trading and playing with collectable cards just like Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh. The only difference between Magic and other card games is that Magic doesn't suck.
I love card games. I've played tons Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. For years I've wanted to give Magic a try, but I could never get past the theme of the game. I'm not much for elves and goblins and all that other fantasy crap, so Magic couldn't pull me in as easily as other card games did with their bright and colorful anime tie-ins (Seriously, I even have some Digimon and Mega Man NT Warrior cards somewhere). Only last year did I finally make the leap into Magic.
In the months that I've played, here are a few things I've learned:
-Magic is better than every other card game ever. It's been around for something like 16 years now and it still hasn't lost sight of its original concept. When I look at games like Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon, it seems like all the new cards are just retardedly overpowered or the rules have been modified so much that I don't even know how to play anymore. With Magic, it's the same game that I learned how to play nine years ago (through a demo on the computer, as I had no friends to play the actual game with).
-Almost everybody and their mom has played at some point in their lives. It seems like every time I go to my local video game store to buy a few boosters, one of the employees will make a comment on the last time they played. Of course, they always name a set from 5+ years ago that I've bearly even heard of because I'm the noob that just started with Shadowmoor (which was released in April 2008).
-Booster drafts are fun. If you don't know, a booster draft is a type of tournament in which each player buys three booster packs (1 booster = 15 random cards) and sits at a table with other players. Each player opens a pack, looks at the cards, selects one card, and keeps it. Once the players have made their selection, they pass the pack to the person next to them. This is repeated until all the boosters have been opened and everyone has a stack of 45 cards. At this point, each person makes a deck out of their cards and they play a tournament. There's a ton of strategy involved and it's a lot less retarded than constructed formats (because you can't just fork out a couple hundred dollars to buy the best cards out there and make a deck out of it).
I've learned a lot more, of course, such as how to play the game and not completely fail at it, but I think I'll leave that for other blogs. I'm very interested in Magic at the moment and I can't see that stopping any time soon, considering there's it's not tied to some crappy anime that I'll grow out of in a few months. If you've never given Magic a shot, I highly recommend picking up some theme decks for you and a friend and trying it out. If you're friendless or all your friends are just dicks, you can also give Magic Online a try. If you'd like to learn how to play, check out these tutorial videos. Seriously, whenever somebody new to the game joins my little group of Magic players, we make them watch those videos and they trounce me right afterward.
Be sure to check my blog later for some Magic fun for the whole family. Well, fun if your family likes making fake magic cards. :P
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