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When I was originally told to review Magic 2015, I was very disheartened. Not because I hate Magic the Gathering (I actually play it in real life and enjoy it quite a lot), but rather because I had already picked up the iOS version. If I was to review that, then no joke I would have given the game a 2 at very best. I won’t go into detail about the iOS version, except a simple warning: for the love of god don’t spend time downloading it. I went into the PC version in hopes that it was better than my experiences with the iOS version.

I’d just like to start this review off by saying I loved Magic 2014 and played it to death. Now, before I go into the game itself, I’ll just quickly run over what Magic The Gathering is. It can be played by a minimum of two players and there is no real limit to the maximum amount of people, so it’s really how many you can fit around a table, although most people limit their games to four players. After placing Lands, you can ‘tap’ these Lands for mana in order to cast spells and bring out creatures. All players start with 20 health and you win by reducing all opponents health to zero by attacking with these spells and creatures (although, with certain cards, there are special ways you can win). That’s the basic run-down of Magic The Gathering.

I could sit here all day listing all the mechanics and so on behind Magic The Gathering, but instead, I’ll just go on what’s new in this game. The story behind Magic 2015 is fairly simple, as it is with most Duels of the Planeswalkers games. Garruk has been cursed by the ‘Chain-Veil’, which is making him hunt down and kill every other planeswalker. Why? Erm… Because there wouldn’t be a game without some mysterious object making Garruk want to mysteriously kill everyone.

The music within Magic 2015 is quite plain, causing me to put my own music on not too far into the game. However, after playing Magic 2014, I was kind of expecting this to happen, so it didn’t bother me too much. But I was still hoping that it would be good music though.

One point which I really want to hit on is the new deck Building. In Magic 2014, you had Sealed Play, in which you opened boosters and made a (normally pretty bad) deck out of that. Well in Magic 2015, that’s how you play the main game. At the start of the game, you select a deck that consist of a combination of any two colours. You can’t see the cards within these decks, and the descriptions are very misleading. After selecting a deck and beating the tutorial, you open Boosters, allowing you to add to the deck and also make a new one of different colours. This is where my first ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with the game comes in.

If you want a specific card, you’re going to have to do one of two things: Grind on the game until you get it from a booster, or… Buy it. With real money. Yes, Magic 2015 has micro-transactions which allow you to buy sets of cards for more than it costs to buy a booster in real life. Instead of progressing through the game normally, they’ve let people buy their way to the best deck that they could possibly have before they even start the game properly. A better name for this game would have been Money The Gathering.

However, the AI is fairly well balanced with its difficulty. On Planeswalker (Hard), it used all its creatures to the best of their abilities and often gets a good combo of damage on you by combining different cards abilities. Whereas on Mage (Easy), they don’t use abilities often, if at all, and they attack with creatures, even if you can defend against it and kill it without any casualties on your side.

I say that, until I got to the fight against Jace, just over half way through the game. I was playing on Archmage (Medium) with a red and black deck that was kinda slow. Because of this, he swarmed me and countered any creatures I brought out, and because of my slow deck speed, I could only really get one creature out a turn, meaning I was open all the time. This meant I had to re-make my ENTIRE deck. For one fight. I’m all for difficulty, but when I have to spend half an hour re-making a deck for one duel, it really ruins the fun.

Also, there are no other game modes. Before, there has always been a special mode (2012 and Archenemy, 2013 had Planechase and 2014 had Two Headed Giant). Well, none of those make a return here. All you have is a 2-4 player FFA. Which gets very boring very quickly, especially when the AI takes ages with their turn.

There are five chapters to travel through, each with 4-6 duels to fight within them. These duels are fun at first, but after a while, it becomes the same thing. The only duel which had some form of originality and fun was a duel in which you fought against your own deck. The campaign itself took me around 8-9 hours to complete, but around three of those were spent fighting and changing my deck against Jace.

It seems Wizards of the Coast have taken a step back with DotP, and it’s a big disappointment. Bad Deck Building, micro-transactions and lack of other modes makes for a boring and unimaginative installment of Duels of The Planeswalkers. If you must get one, get Magic 2014, but keep the hell away from this.

Pro’s:
It’s Magic The Gathering
Finally custom-build your deck
Balanced AI

Cons:
The deck building is bad
Only one gamemode
Boring music
Bad starting decks
Bad storyline
Microtransactions *-*

Daylight: probably one of the strangest names that Zombie Studios could have given it, as there is an immediate scarcity of the stuff. ‘Nighttime’ probably would have been a more fitting title for the game, as it’s cliché, much like the rest of the game itself.

Daylight is a survival horror game in which each area is randomly generated upon entering it, thus allowing a different game each time you play through it. Being the first game ever to use the Unreal Engine 4, it has a lot to live up to in order to make it a game to remember.

As you start, you wake on the floor with no memory of who you are or how you got there. All you have is a phone, which acts as a flashlight, a map and a means of communications for a mysterious voice that guides (or attempts to) you through the game, but rarely actually helps. Instead, the voice either confuses you with riddles or mocks you in some way. After investigating the room, you open a door and discover you’re in an asylum. You progress past each level by collecting remnants (pieces of paper that contain information of the asylum’s past.) Once you’ve collected enough remnants, a key appears, which is an object that one of the former inmates were very fond of, like a doll or The Bible. This is used to unlock the doorway and progress to the next level. Not all remnants appear during one playthrough, meaning people who like to 100% games will find joy in playing through it multiple times.

Through the areas you can find glow sticks and flares. Glow sticks cause objects of interest to glow, whether it is because they can be searched or moved, making them an invaluable tool which you will find yourself using a lot throughout Daylight.

As you collect more remnants, your threat level gets higher, causing the Witch to appear. There is little to no explanation about why the Witch is there or how she got there. The higher the threat level is, the more persistent she is at attacking and following you. Unfortunately, she is too easy to evade. Lighting flares keeps her away for the duration of the flare’s light, but merely running in the opposite direction or even running straight past her also suffices, as once you have seen her, she seems to forget the aspect of using her legs, meaning she just stands there gormless until you look away.

I’m not going to lie though, the moments when she does appear are terrifying, especially when she is dangerously close to you when you see her. The moments when she does appear are pulled off just right, the obvious things such as how the camera pans round to her automatically when she’s a set distance to you, the sudden music, the scream she lets out to the way she immediately lurches forward slightly once you see her, as if she’s going to jump through your screen and slap you across the face as you scream like a little ♥♥♥♥♥.

If this is sounding scarily (no pun intended) similar to Slender, that’s because it is. Running around in circles, hearing loud noises until you find all the pages gives a strange sense of déjà vu. Like Slender, the most annoying part of the game is when you have all but one remnant (or page, in Slender’s case) and you’re running in circles trying to find the damn thing whilst desperately avoiding whatever it is that is practically hanging off your buttcheeks.

Each level is a different part of the asylum, starting with the hospital, then the prison, then the sewers and finally ending with the forest. These (theoretically) should get harder as they go on, but it goes the opposite way. For me, the hospital was the largest area and was made a lot more like a maze, even to the point of having multiple floors. The game actually gets easier after that. The prison is a rather small area, as are the sewers. The forest is literally that; a big open forest area, meaning getting away is easy, especially as there isn’t any stamina to limit your running, allowing you to just sprint around until you find an area of interest. I understand that they are randomly generated, but so are the levels in The Binding of Isaac, and they get larger and more difficult the deeper you get, so why can't it be the same here?

The game itself took me two and a half hours to complete, and about half of that was spent looking for the last remnant in each area whilst avoiding Witch attacks every ten seconds. Point is, if you’re looking for a long game, Daylight is the wrong place to be looking.

As I mentioned before, Daylight is the first game to use the Unreal Engine 4, and it has put it to very good use. The environments and game itself is beautiful to look at (except the screaming ladies) and very clearly boasts the power of UE4. Even to things such as how dynamic the lighting is. For instance, at one point I was standing behind a table, trying to regain my composure not long after a Witch attack. As I was standing still, my character started waving the glow stick in her hand around, and as she did, the shadow of the table I was behind moved accordingly to how she moved the glow stick. Just small things like that show the potential of what Unreal Engine 4 can do and really add to the experience.

Overall, Daylight is a game that had the potential to overthrow games like Outlast and Amnesia. Armed with randomly-generated areas and Unreal Engine 4, it should have, but boring and repetitive gameplay, cliché design, small length and general unoriginality unfortunately let it down massively.



4.5/10

Pro’s
Looks brilliant
Best scares I’ve seen in a long time
Multiple playthroughs appeal to hoarders

Con’s
Too unoriginal
Way too short
Littered with horror-cliché’s
Got easier the further I got
Get’s boring after a while

I got on a Motorbike. I was then Flung into the air, and began flying 50 feet in the air before crashing into a building.

Lovin' It!

Sh!t-Your-Pants-Simulator 2013

Epic. 'Nuff Said