Magic and Me

Magic and Me

I’ve been playing Magic for about fifteen years now. It’s been there at times when I’ve needed it, through good and bad, it’s helped me meet great people and I’ve had some of the best times of my life at events hanging out with friends, having a laugh and playing a fantastic game.

Now, I don’t want this just to be an article about how excellent Magic: The Gathering Is, because in my opinion it is the best trading card game (TCG) ever. I’m writing this to try and show you how it has affected and altered my life. Why don’t we start at the start…

I’m eight years old, rummaging through a box of various bits and pieces, when I come across a Magic: The Gathering Portal starter pack. The box art depicting a moss-covered brickwork archway with a swirly, multi-coloured vortex or Portal if you will, containing cards built into pre-made decks that you learn to play Magic with. Luckily my older brother new how to play so, I took the box and start playing Magic with him. One of the first cards I remember seeing was a Raging Goblin; a 1/1 creature with haste for a single red mana, nothing special but that was the gateway card, for me anyway, that started a beautiful friendship. My brother and I started taking other cards from his collection and changing the decks; adding different types of creatures, finding new spells to try out and learning what cards worked with each other. That’s when I fell in love with both the style and feel of the game.

I remember being frustrated to start with, I’m not going to lie, I found it hard. However, I also found it rewarding when it worked. When I put those pieces together successfully, I got this feeling of accomplishment and pride. That feeling got me hooked and kept me wanting more, confirming the start of my journey through the different planes and sets of Magic: The Gathering. Along with drafting and constant deck building, one day I hoped to make it big at a Pro tour or Grand Prix, I lived Magic.

At the age of twelve, I remember playing in a local Pro tour qualifier and even though I didn’t do well, it was such an enjoyable experience. Round after round, meeting new and interesting people, engaging in a battle of skill until one person, usually not me, emerged victorious. The beauty of these events, and Magic in general, are the players. A mix of people from all walks of life, young and old all, from every nationality, all brought together for one reason. This was enlightening to me, from my local game store to a one hundred and fifty person qualifying event. I could always find a place to interact with other people that have come together to have fun, no matter who they are and nothing else mattered. Finding common ground with my opponents after a match and making a new friend to stay in contact with, swap deck ideas and travel to and meet with at other events across the world. Magic provided me with another way to expand my friendship circle while learning and experiencing so many things.

Getting older, I didn’t feel like I was improving at Magic as much as I would have liked to. It had been a hobby so far but losing isn’t a good feeling no matter how much you learn from it. So, rather than just playing fun, janky decks, I started testing with more serious decks. Playing with players that were on a higher level than me seemed futile at first, but the best way to better yourself is to play opponents that are better than you. With enough knuckling down, really paying attention and learning how to be more patient, I slowly started to progress. I became more invested in attending and playing more events. Maybe I felt worse than before when I lost, but as long as I was confident and happy with the play I had made, that’s all I could ask of myself.

I few years later I attended a Grand Prix in Brighton. Thanks to a mix of a quote made by me at my local store which was taken way out of context and having a friend in the circles of pro level players, I found myself playing a five-colour control match against Shuhei Nakamura. At the age of fifteen, I thought this was too good to be true. Granted it was a friendly match and not on the tournament scene but this is one of the best players in the world. I’ll tell you now, I was shitting myself. I know I was going to lose, although at one point I thought I was getting close to winning but looking back, I think he was just toying with me. Shuhei’s English is great but with the game of Magic being played between us, we understood each other with no problems, it acting a universal language for the both of us.

Inevitably, I lost spectacularly but that didn’t faze me. I had just sat down and gone card for card with one of the best Japanese pros of all time. It was an incredible experience for me and one that has stayed with me all this time, I learned a lot from my game with Shuhei, along with marveling at his ability. His composure and forethought was unbelievable, being able to predict my plays with almost pinpoint accuracy and react accordingly, coupled with his respect for the game and his opponent really made me want to achieve more. Since then, I have tried to emulate Shuhei’s way of thinking both in Magic and in life, trying to become more patient and taking all the information available to me into consideration.

With all the time I had spent with Magic: The Gathering, reading the cards and backstory, I had learned definitions of new words or even words I had come across before and not understood. Either thanks to the art of the card giving me an image to extrapolate from or the context of the effect for example, I’m fairly sure each new set has provided me with at least one new addition to my vocabulary. It wasn’t just language, it affected my maths as well. I know repetition is the mother of learning, but you learn something faster if you attach something you enjoy to it acting as motivation. With life totals, combat damage, mana count, even deck building, Magic and maths was a good combination for me. Through the years with Magic I have been many places, met many people and learned many things. Admittedly, I haven’t been playing as much in recent years due to work, responsibilities and general life, but I have always kept up with new cards and goings on with wizard and events. 

However, I think that has been an advantage in relation to improvement and achieving more within the game. I feel my time away from playing Magic has given me a chance to take a step back and try to better understand the way the game works; evaluating cards and grasping the meta game for example. This has helped me improved my drafting or what decks to play at an event of course, but by using this I have learned to refine my way of thinking on a broader scale. Being able to better asses a situation; understanding what I need, when I need it and how to use it. Recognise patterns; in a person’s play style or what they’re drafting for example, and getting better at reading whatever the current circumstances are; in both playing Magic and knowing what decks are prevalent at what times as well as in everyday life, Magic has been invaluable to me.

I hope this has given you an interesting look into my life with Magic and shown you some of the things that I have taken away. I also hope this has helped give you an idea of what this sort of game can provide for you, Magic has helped me but for you it could be any game that challenges you and makes you want to accomplish more. Overall I want to demonstration the effects of perseverance and where it can take you along the way. 

If reading this has given you the urge to start your gaming journey, I bid you good luck on your travels otherwise, keep checking back to Game Changers for more MTG news, tales and more.

Bulletstorm

Bulletstorm

So apart from possibly being the worst type of weather, Bulletstorm is an FPS brought to us by People Can Fly (makers of Painkiller) and Epic (the Gears of War guys). You would think the run gun fun of Painkiller and the gritty realism of Gears of war would make a good mix, and for the most part, that’s correct. You have an array of varied weapons, ranging from the obligatory assault rifle to what I like to call the bouncing ball of justice. This weapon fires a bouncing betty-esc ball which is content to bounce up and down two feet in front of you waiting for you to run up and kick it into onrushing enemies. Sounds good in theory but connecting with it is a matter left to the baby Jesus and his legs are tiny, he can’t kick shit. I’ll take this time to reaffirm to anyone that, as you can imagine; having to fire a gun, watch the bullet, kick the bullet in the right direction and hope it hits what you were looking at before what you were looking at has realised what a berk you’re making of yourself and has fucked off, is quite flow breaking in an FPS no matter how satisfying it is when you blow up onlooking mutants. Your mighty boot is useful for something when being combined with your Energy Leash. Using this, you can pull enemies towards you and give them a swift punt and then pair that with a shotgun to send various bits of bad guys flying in various directions. All in all, Bulletstorm offers some cathartic weapons, some with satisfying feels and uses like the Flail gun, that sends two linked grenades that wrap around foes before detonating. The main issue come with the secondary fire on your guns. Although giving you a more powerful, alternative shot, having to press the shoulder button to activate the secondary fire and then the trigger to fire it gives you one more thing to think about in the heat of battle. This could have been circumvented by just using the shoulder button to deploy the secondary fire, because no one holds a controller with one finger on each shoulder and trigger button. 

 So, that’s the Painkiller influence now what about the Gears of war influence? 

Well most of that lies in the characters and settings. The main character looks like the love child of Marcus Fenix and Monkey from Enslaved; a big, grizzled, overly manly man with the stature of an upright car and the hair and sideburns that could star in their own Pantene advert. In contrast to the gung-ho muscle head main protagonist, he has a level headed, logical second in command. Sounds out of place in a game like this although, most of this could do with the fact that he becomes part robot, so if the revolutionary space army doesn’t work out for him, he would kick arse on Robot wars. Both make haste on their journey through lovely, picture-esc sky boxes filled with vivid foliage and glistening glass from the crumbling ruins that lay all around you from the once upright city-scape, and if you haven’t noticed by now, I’m trying to avoid talking about the story.

It’s not bad, it just doesn’t stand out from the other modern FPS stories. You’re a space marine who has learned of the dark truth behind the man running your squad and now you vow to destroy him for what he has done. Forgetting that the army doesn’t look fondly on killing a commanding officer, but fuck that let’s shoot his ship down and hunt the bastard! Our heroes find their man, General Sarrano, and he makes them realise that maybe this is bigger than they thought! Grayson (that’s Chevy Mcsideburns name by the way) is a fickle man and absorbs information as gospel the instant it leaves a character’s mouth, Sarrano abusing this fact in particular. Ishi (that’s Robo-Joe) plays straight man to Gray’s flippant antics, disapproving of Grayson’s thirst for revenge, all the while losing his mind to the machine man! The last member to round off the cast is Trishka. True to female character models in gritty war shooters, she’s so much better in every way to the guys for no other reason than to avoid having a kidnapped princess story on our hands. So, naturally she saves your stupid arse on several occasions, when in reality, you would probably be able to pull yourself onto a ledge when you look like a man that benches the entire gym. After finding Sarrano, and therefore being in a prime position to shoot him in the face, Gray changes his mind. I guess he’s more of a chase guy than an end result man, instead choosing to blindly follow the genocidal prick that ultimately brought him to this planet. At this point I think its apt to talk more about Gears of war because if you’ve played the first Gears then you’ve played Bulletstorm and had more fun. The story culminates in a similar way but seems to lose all the nice side elements and, looking back, I don’t remember there being any roadblocks besides chest high walls and debris that Gray relishes in getting stuck on. Bulletstorm isn’t a long game, at least it didn’t feel like it, but after the 30^th smashed and burning room with overgrowing trees all over the place it does start to all mesh together. 

The main drive for this is Gray’s guilt for all the people he’s killed, which he hammers home in every cut-scene, just in case the game puts you into a bored trance and you forget what you’re doing here I guess. But once he finds out about Sarrano’s sorted past, Gray embarks on a redemption quest to kill him with gusto because that’s how he thinks forgiveness works. It’s like the Dom’s wife thing that drives Gears one just without all the other characters having an equally depressing backstory to balance it out, and with less Dom’s wife, probably because Gray shot her too. The character’s delivery is played to an odd contrast when you think about it though. Leaping from Gray’s incessant whining about all the lives that he couldn’t save from his own destructive nature, to Sarrano’s constant swearing, sarcasm and casual racism. All the while running through a city on the verge of cataclysm, putting bullets in anything that moves. Bulletstorm wants to have its sweary, bullet-ridden cake and eat it, and it starts to come across a bit over the top. 

Final Thought: It’s fun. A nice way to kill a few hours at a time with a decent satisfaction level in relation to the weapons. Harking back to the weapons of the doom and quake era, as intentional and obvious as the homage is, it works. But if you can wait a little longer and save your money or swallow your sadness and trade in some of you more played games, I would suggest Gears of War.

I’m sure you’ll have fun with Bulletstorm, or Gears of War, gunning down legions of mutants, but keep checking back to Game Changers for more game news and more.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Ya know, you don’t ever really hear much about left or right earth, do you? Maybe nothing happens there and everyone is happy and smiling all the time. Come to think of it that wouldn’t make good content, especially not 6 films and 40 games worth. 

We’re back in good old Middle Earth but that’s where the source material starts to takes a back seat, we have brand new characters and with that brings a new protagonist to the Mordor war! Technically he’s new to the lore but I’ll take this time to say that Shadow of Mordor takes place after The Hobbit but before The Lord of the Rings, so he becomes new to the universe without the award question of his absence in the first 3 films.

The new guy in question is called Talion.  A big old grump and we start by taking a look into an average day in the life of Talion, we seem to have caught him on a bad day though because his family has just been sacrificed in front of him. Wow, this one’s of to a scorcher but bare-with me it gets slightly better. The reason for said sacrifice is to awaken a wraith, it’s like a ghost but Middle Earth is a bit middle agey (no pun intended) with its words sometimes caught somewhere between aristocratic toff and Victorian cockney commoner. Unfortunately, this goes awry and the wraith ends up merging with Talion, kinda like The Exorcist but with less vomit and head spinning. Our ghost friends name is Celebrimbor and he’s an elf whose family was also sliced and diced along with him, and together they embark on a magical journey of discovery.

Carrying on from what I said earlier, the source of this franchise is very well trodden so any mistakes would be picked up pretty quickly. So, what has been chosen this time around? The Orcs are now Uruks, a slightly different kind of Orc but something about being an earlier breed of Orc, and this Uruks have quite a hierarchy system but more on that later. The wildlife consists of Caragors, think wolf meets warthog, a Wolf-Hog if you will but on second thought that makes me think of that one sonic game so don’t do that. The Graug, this is the fancy, Shadow of Mordor name for troll; big, angry and can wreck an Uruk gangs shit pretty sharpish. So to answer my own question, everything has changed without being changed. It’s all been tweaked a bit in ways to keep its feeling fresh but retaining that sense of familiarity in the world and it does it well. There are still Dwarves along with a thick Scottish accent which is a nice change from all the humans proudly declaring their lines like they’re in a school amateur dramatics production. It also seems that Dwarves are the only race in this world that are allowed to convey happiness and joy rather than the straight face of the Human or the twisted, pained ramblings of the Uruk. Sauron is in to take his rightful villainous position and of course I didn’t forget to mention Golem. The poster boy of the brand in my mind or at least it seems to be the character that most people have latched onto, but to be honest only shows up in this game pretty much as fan service.

So, we’ve covered lore, said hello to our spanking new protagonist, but what about that Uruk hierarchy I teased you with earlier? Something new that Shadow of Mordor does bring to the table is the Nemesis system. Uruks are split into captains and war chiefs, all of which receiving a name and a title like Gavin the Bore. Gavin, has the opportunity to climb the ranks by beating other Uruk captains, maybe even a war chief if he’s feeling particularly ballsy that day, or by killing your Wraith ridden ass. The Nemesis system makes this random and completely organic meaning that captains will fight among themselves, duking it out for rank and commanding a larger army of Uruk underlings. But that’s not all, you can obtain intel revealing strengths and weaknesses of the captains and war chiefs. For example, you may find intel that tells you a captain is afraid of Caragors at which point you can find the nearest Caragor, jump atop and ride into battle as majestically as a drunken stumble home. These weaknesses can be very useful to take revenge or just take your frustration out on the nearest group or Uruks that happened to contain a captain. All of this without you having to unlock an ability, trigger a cut-scene or complete mission is quite interesting, or at least it would be if the Nemesis system worked on last generation consoles. If you were playing on a PS3 or Xbox 360 like I was, you were treated to essentially a cosmetic Nemesis system, changing the names and ranks of the Uruk as designed. However, repeats start building up, you will bump into Gavin the Bore again and after killing him for the 5^th time I’m starting to think the randomization isn’t as reliable as I was informed. 

Other problems that Shadow of Mordor has with last gen consoles is the graphics and textures. Now I will admit I didn’t see much of this until about the start of the second half but then it was everywhere. The roofs all merge into a brown slab instead of the wooden planks they were intended to be, the grass becomes what looks like fuzzy felt and the draw distance at some points just seems like someone cut out a silhouette from black paper and stuck it behind. Bloom was an issue; on a couple of occasions it was like walking into the light of god himself only for me to reach the other side and be greeted with a dead-end cave that has no right having bloom in it.

These are all minor annoyances though because the PS3 and 360 versions have glitching issues and not the funny kind where you character flails about like Octodad, the controller snapping kind. Per example, I was trying to sneakily infiltrate an Uruk gang, silently isolate and pick them off one by one, maybe headshotting any remaining Uruk and then take out the captain, I had even done a proper recon and counted the number of enemies. As a started phase 1 of my plan I made my way towards my chosen vantage point but the game had different ideas and apparently I hadn’t climbed the wall in the right place. With Talion refusing to come down and my plan quickly falling apart I was forced to get the attention of some Uruks to try and knock Talion of the ledge he formed such a friendship with. They were happy to oblige and gleefully threw axes and knives at me until I had reached my goal. On another occasion, after hopping around the rooftops of an Uruk camp and scouting out which one to pick off first I made a wrong turn and ended up having to climb back up a tower to continue my Santa-esc visits but with a different type and much sharper present to the neck. The tower however must not have been paying attention because, at the moment I made contact with it, instead of grabbing a ledge I just phased through it leaving Talion falling in an endless abyss, for about 2 minutes before reloading.

I feel I’ve talked about the bad bits of the game a bit much, what does it do well?

Well, all in all the game play is great. It’s the best bits of Assassins Creed; the stealthing around your targets and deciding which one’s day to ruin with a dagger to the chops, and the best part of Arkham Asylyum; the combat flowing seamlessly, hit after hit like a very prolific drug addict and then moving swiftly back into stealth mode like said drug addicts mum just walked into his room unannounced. The characters are well rounded and most have rich backstories you learn of from picking up artifacts related to the NCP of the hour while on your travels. The Upgrade system was useful and it didn't take too long to unlock the next tier giving me something to look forward to as I agonize over which to use my skill point on in fear of it being shit. While I was on a last gen console and didn't get the full benefit of the Nemesis system, the concept is fantastic, giving you another problem to worry about that left alone will only get worse. You can have a lot of fun with it, choosing one Uruk to raise up to a war-chief, all the while having all his strengths and weaknesses in your back pocket, and then literally stab him in the back providing he's weak to stealth. It starts getting  a bit overkill when you acquire a skill that lets you control enemies that fight with you, turning you into the AI director in Left 4 Dead.

Final thought: Shadow of Mordor is a good game with a solid story, I guess one of the benefits of something new to this world means it isn’t hindered by any previous lore about the character because there isn’t any. If you were to purchase this however, I would highly recommend the steam version though any of the newer generation console versions would probably suffice.