Eye of Judgment Review:
It's not your traditional card game.
Eye of Judgment is a card game build for the PS3 (A later version was
ported tot he PSP) The game showed off what the Playstation Eye could
do.
Eye of Judgment is played with real
life cards, and the Playstation 3 by using the Playstation Eye to
read the cards. For those of you who don't know, you might be asking
yourself, why do I need the Playstation Eye to play a card game?
It's simple! It comes down to the fact
that Eye of Judgment PS3 games, uses the camera to read the card, and
then on your Television a 3D model of your creature emerges. It's a
really cool concept, each card has a specific pattern on it, and the
game is programed to read that pattern, the placement of the card
(Facing North, South, East, or West) and displays a virtual rendition
of that card.
The game is kind of played like a bunch
of other card games, taking some parts from one or another but really
giving it a nice unique feeling that can not be ignored.
The game is played on a 9 field board,
3x3 setup like this:
This is what the play mat looks like.
The Camera symbol on each of the four sides shows where the camera
can be set up, the two little symbols next to it are Discard pile,
Library.
Just a basic rundown, I'm not going
into full detail here:
Each person (This is a two player game)
draws 5 cards from their 30 card deck (no more, no less) During each
person's turn they get 2 mana at the start. This is used to activate
cards, e.g. use a spell, place a creature, activate a creature, etc.
The goal of the game is to occupy 5 of
the 9 tiles on the board before your opponent does. It's sounds
simple, but it's really not.
There use to be 4 ways to “play a
game” they are as follows:
- Human vs Cpu
- Cpu vs Cpu
- Human vs Human (Offline on the same PS3)
- Human vs Human (Online)
Online was discontinued about 3 years
ago, so that ends online play.
One of the best things you co do for
yourself though, (especially if your new to this game) is to put the
Cpu on the highest skill setting and watch them battle it out.
Starting off the only deck registered is the starter deck that you
get. After that you can make and register more decks, which is great.
You can buy a theme deck, use the Playstation Eye mode in deck
builder so it reads the cards and adds it to the deck list, then have
the cpu's battle it out to get an understanding of how the decks
plays out.
The graphics are pretty good in my
opinion. The field looks nice, there's animation in the field. The
using of spells, or summoning creatures looks really well thought
out. The 3D animations are also really good, the 3D animations give
this an extra point in the graphics department because they are
animated in the battles (kind of a given) but they are also animated
when not doing anything, just waiting around, you can see them move.
It gives it a nice realism, which is one thing that really raises the
bar.
Story = NONE. No really none, the PSP
version has a story part, but the PS3 version does not. I guess you
could say that the main intro of the game is the story, but by
itself, there is not story mode where you can go around and fight
enemies.
Learning Curve = WTF??? This game does
a good job of explaining the rules to you, but it would be better to
watch a video on youtube since they go more in depth in letting you
know the little ins and outs of this game. Even setting the CPU level
to beginner for noobs will still pose a good challenge to you if you
don't know what your doing. I learned more from youtube than I did
from this game, so take my advice, as someone who's been playing card
game for well over a decade now, I found learning easier online
watching and listening to others. Also learn how to use the action
cards, like turn end, action, status, cancel) these are special cards
that don't go into the deck, but stay off to the side. Action card
will let you attack with a specific creature that you play it down
on. Status let you check the status of all cards on the field, turn
end, well ends your turn. Cancel card, cancels the current event.
Music is well tricky, the music is
really great on one hand, but sucks on the other. There's one song
that plays more than anything else, unless you or your opponent gets
put into check. While I do know that there is an OST for this game,
I've only heard a few metal songs in the game, so like I said, it's
good on one hand, but bad on the other.
Replayability = hardly any if you only
have one deck, A.K.A. The starter deck. With more decks, you can try
out more things and can even go against those decks with the CPU to
see what they might tend to play, to give you a better understanding
on how the deck works. Plus you can always play 2 players on the same
PS3 and just have fun with a buddy!
The main problem that this game had was
the launch price of it. The game came bundled (and still does on
Amazon, only much cheaper) With the PS3 game, Playstation Eye camera,
Play Mat, Camera Stand, (The camera has to be pointed down towards
the mat in order to see all of the cards) Starter Deck, and a Booster
Pack. All of this was launched at $59.99 which is your typical
starting price point for Playstation 3 games, the only problem was
the fact that the Playstation Eye was relatively new and people
didn't really know what other things you could do with it.
The kill shot for this game though was
Sony's statement that these cards could not be copied. Well it didn't
take very long for that to be proven false as I believe the same year
that this game came out, people were already proving that they could
copy the cards. Sony's master plan failed because the Playstation Eye
is not a high resolution camera, so your average Joe could take a
scan of a card, print it off and use it, both offline and online. Due
to this Wizards of the Coast, dropped the game (I believe after the
second set) Hasbro took over the third and final set, and the game
was discontinued I believe literally the next year after it's
release. Another problem was when the second and third set were
released, you have to buy, BUY Eye of Judgment DLC in order to use
those cards. Call me crazy, but spending $100's of cards, physical
cards, to then say well you can't use this unless you buy these DLC
is Greedy 101 and was a contribution factor in the game's demise
since who would buy the DLC to then be able to use the physical
cards?
With all of that said though, Eye of
Judgment had a very nice run as a card game, spanned three sets, 10
different starter decks, with many different booster packs.
While I wouldn't tell someone to make
copies of cards and sell them online or sell them to a person face to
face as real cards, (because that would be an evil bastard thing to
do) I would say that if you want to play certain decks, or certain
cards.
PRINT THEM!!!
Set 1 cards, don't print them. They are
still super easy and cheap to find, I believe the five theme decks
are about $40.00 on amazon for all 5. Booster Packs can be had for
relatively cheap.
However set 2 booster packs are at
least double what set one is, and the theme decks for set 2 (if you
can find them, amazon has only one of them for sale as of this
review) are going for $65.00 and UP.
Set 3 cards are even more expensive
still and I don't see the need for it TBH.
In the end I give this game a 9 out of
10
I feel that they took a chance with
this game, and did very well with it. They could have done a better
job with how the cards work, or maybe only have a few real cards for
a deck and when the game say you get this card, you can choose (in
the game) which card to use and place a card done that corresponds to
it. Similarity to how the action cards work, but have 5 action
creature cards, and some action spell cards. If they did the game
that way, they there would have been loss of money from people
printing off the cards. However with them doing the game this way, at
least you can play without the PS3, granting you make your own Eye of
Judgment field.
Remember, if you want to piss about,
print the cards. If you want to scam people and sell them, don't it's
wrong and not cool!
