The Bus

Reviews on Metacritic

I can't not get this. It's the real reason I bought the PS3 for gaming. I'm ashamed to admit it. Ashamed.

So... anyone else?

fujishig

After reading about it in Penny Arcade a month ago, I admit I'm intrigued, but I have a huge backlog of games and there apparently is very little to the single-player game. So it'd be yet another accessory-mandated game that will sit collecting dust. I mean, I have the original Eyetoy and the 360 camera, and to date there is very little use for either of them.

How does it work, anyway... do you have to buy packs of cards as well?

The Bus

You can, I think, which makes me angry at the game, but hopefully it's not something all-consuming.

Decker

I saw this at BB today. One huge-ass plastic package with game, Camera, Starter deck, individual booster pack. Unreal. That's a nice-market product there. I suppose there's a market for that sort of game but I suppose it's really small.

JasonF

I played with it at Wizard World Chicago this summer. It was really cool. I don't know that I'd buy it even if I did have a PS3, but it was a neat game.

Shiv Shankly

I thought about picking this up, but the cards can apparently be scanned and printed out on paper, and I'm not interested in going online and playing people who've printed out a deck of killer cards.

Supermallet

Actually, I like the ability to do that. It means you only have to spend money on the game once, instead of buying endless boosters.

The Bus

Did they only make 500 of these? Every store I went to either didn't get it or had sold out of them.

I really wanted to play tonight.

Supermallet

My Gamestop said they were delayed until tomorrow.

Edit: The more I read about this, the cooler I think it is. I used to love Magic The Gathering and this seems like a fun way to recreate something like that without having to find a live person to play in front of me. Plus you get the camera which I'm sure will be used for other games in the future. And it seems worthwhile to support games that do something genuinely different.

Edison

Sad as it is, this is the title that would make me get a PS3 (I would like a blu-ray player also, but this might push me over the edge). One of the guys on the Gamers with Jobs podcast demonstrated it at Blizzcon, and PAX I believe, so they've talked about it a few times.

UncleGramps

With the flood of October and November releases, I can't buy it right now, but it is going on my Xmas list. If I get gift certificates or cash, I'll be picking it up then. I've never gotten into a CCG before, but the camera functionality has definitely piqued my interest.

The Bus

As much as R&C was fun, I'd rather support cool new game ideas like this, as Supr said.

My Gamestop only had 1 copy which they got today, not yesterday. No BB/CC/Wal-Marts had it either. Wal-Mart said they would sell it online only for the first few weeks.

Now... where are these scanned in cards?

Canis Firebrand

I picked it up last night.

Overall, I don't regret my purchase. The camera is nice and hopefully they make use of it for future games. There is a free download in the PSN for a tool that lets you edit pics, make clips, etc.

The cards are nice and they have some heft and quality to them. I'm considering putting them in plastic card sleeves to protect them. As long as the camera can read them of course.

The gameplay is pretty cool and some great effects when using the cards in a battle. You really have to make sure that the lighting is good otherwise the system has a hard time reading cards. It is accurate in counting how many cards you have in your hand, your deck and discard pile.

I played 4 matches against the computer and lost each time. A couple of times some things did not make sense like when I attacked a creature of the computers and did no damage, but the computer never had any attacks fail. It is going to take some getting used to the gameplay, etc.

The Bus

I played around with it a bit this afternoon. I think it would've been better if there was a "demo" where you actually got to play. I'm still unsure as to how things work exactly because I summoned a car (the Fortress) and did no damage, which lost me the game. It's also hard to tell so far what cards are good and which are not.

More than anything I'm itching to buy a few booster packs to get new cards.

Anyone that has this, add me on PSN. Same Gamertag as XBL.

Supermallet

I picked this up today. Had to go to two different Gamestops to find it. Haven't tried it yet, but I'm itching to.

MasterofDVD

This is the main game I wanted when I had my PS3. I'm jealous of each and every one of you. I just couldn't justify the price of all this stuff when I already had such a pricey system collecting dust. I just hope that those of you who have it can enjoy it without everyone else printing out their own cards and ruining the game for everyone.

Supermallet

Okay, played around with it. So far, pretty neat. The manual for the game sucks. You pretty much have to watch the tutorials, which can get really boring but it's necessary to watch almost all of them. This isn't the kind of game where you can just drop in and pick it up as you go along.

Once I did manage to start up a game, I think I got into the flow pretty quickly. As I said, I used to play Magic: The Gathering, so it's not like I've never done one of these before. The games were actually pretty short. Since you have to spend mana to make your summoned characters rotate or attack, half the time you only use them once or twice. And once you manage to get 5 on the board, you're done. I can't imagine a game going so long that somebody loses by having exhausted their library (unless some spell makes them draw faster or remove cards directly). Still, it's cool, it got me to actually play a game on my PS3 again (which hasn't happened since Ninja Gaiden Sigma), and I get the camera with it. I downloaded the free camera program but haven't tried it yet.

The only problem I've really had with the game is sometimes the camera had trouble recognizing cards that were on the opposite side of the board. I had to finagle them into just the right position otherwise it would either not realize I had put down a card, or it would try to endlessly scan and fail halfway through each time. Hopefully it was just something to do with the lighting conditions and wasn't the kind of thing that will happen every time.

P.S. Bus and Vryce I sent you friend requests.

P.P.S. Looks like the camera also has a mic on it, which you can set to be the default audio mic for when you play games. So not only do you get the camera, but it eliminates the need for a bluetooth headset.

The Bus

Yeah, between setup and seeing the videos, it's a bit of a chore. I wish the videos were online so you could see them on your own time. They're also not HD, which I thought was a bit weird since it makes you think the game is going to look pretty crappy (it does not).

Playing at night does mean I have to jury-rig some things here and there but overall I'm pretty happy with the recognition. I tried to print out a card but it didn't recognize it. Perhaps because it was black and white.

Master of DVD, you should get it. I had a big geeky grin on my face when I first started playing it. When you play online you don't even interact with your PS3 controller, which is really cool.

fujishig

BTW, I've saw it at a few targets and Walmarts in quantity, so it's not that hard to find.

How are they going to sell packs and boosters?

The Bus

The PA forums mentioned that there's packs and boosters at Target. It's a bit of a hike to the nearest one here so I might check it out eventually. The game should've come with two boosters to make building a deck a little bit more interesting.

As it stands, I don't like the 8-cards-for-$4 pricing and will happily welcome full scans (or make my own of duplicate cards I need).

Online matches take about 20-30 minutes, while computer matches take about 10.

Supermallet

Bus, where did you find card scans to print out?

fujishig

Well, the copying aspect (which admittedly makes this game cheaper, I guess) really makes me doubt that there will be any kind of thriving online community for this game that doesn't consist just of "killer decks."

Supermallet

I think a game this specialized wouldn't have had a thriving online community anyway. But as I said, I like the idea of using printed out cards, because there's no way I'm going to invest tons of money in a CCG again. This way, if everyone has all the cards, it comes down to strategy. Just because a card is rare doesn't mean it's useful in every situation. I've got one rare card that costs 9 mana to cast and another 4 or 5 to activate. While a big gun like that is admittedly cool, the way this game is set up, I'll have very little opportunity to use him, as it's difficult to rack up that amount of mana without losing the board to your opponent. In fact, the way this game is designed, a superior deck will probably consist of many disposable but cheap to cast creatures that don't live long and don't do much damage, but you can clutter the board with.

The Bus

Supr, one card was linked on Penny Arcade. There's a Kotaku story, let me see if I can dig it up.


http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/eye-o...ted-315714.php
http://kotaku.com/gaming/oops/eye-of...ble-314899.php

xmiyux

This is the first game that has made me jealous of you PS3 folk. The idea is genius and anyone who has heard me go on ad nauseum over the past few years knows i obsess over CCGs on consoles.

Too bad it isn't a multiplatform game.