Intro:
The Eye of Judgment was one of Sony's big showings at E3 2006 that dropped a few jaws and had few scratching their heads but its now 2 years later, the games been out well over a year and a half ,and its on Season 2 with 210 cards so without further ado i give you my complete review of The Eye of Judgment.
Controls:
This is going to be short and sweet. The game is played on flat surface using the Playstation Eye USB Camera that is included with it, and the cloth gaming field. The camera detects your cards and brings your creature to life on screen. End your turn, canceling an action, and showing status of a card is all done by using cards so you dont need to juggle a controller the entire round. However you can use a controller to do these things and also press R2 to show stats of a creature and the field its on. Since you dont know alot of what im talking about im going to throw the controls a 8 for working pretty well besides a few lighting issues which the game lets you manipulate to fit your situation. Now to the biggest part of the game
Gameplay:
The gameplay in Eye of Judgment, is some of the most intricate and detailed strategic gaming, I have ever experienced in my life. It combines Turn Based strategy and collectible card gameing in the best ways so ill take this time to narrow down the basics. The playing field is 9 squares made up of 3 rows like this.
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
[img][img][/img][/img]
In an official game which is what all Ranked online games play. Each field has one of the games five elements. 1 is Fire, 2 is Water ,3 is Wood, 4 is Earth, 5 is Biolith, 6 is Water, 7 is Fire, 8 is Wood, 9 is Earth. Fire and Water are weak to each other, as are Earth and Wood. Biolith however has no weakness. Anyways, the game is played using a deck of creature and spell cards. You can only have 30 cards to a deck and 3 of the same type of card (1 if the card specifies so which is the case for Hero, Betrayer, Noble and Warlord cards).A creature has a set mana cost, an activation cost, sometimes a written effect, and of course health and attack. The game is played like most standard card games you get 2 mana at the beginning of each turn and you draw 5 cards, each following turn you get an additional 2 mana and 1 card. Each turn is split into the 5 basic phases of most card games. Move, Cast, Summon, Resolution, and End. If you do Summon, you skip Move and Cast and it goes right to Resolution and End. The mana given to you can be used to Summon and Cast and once a creature has been summoned out on the field you may pay mana to attack or rotate the creature using the activation cost which are are part of your Move phase.. The object of the game is to either get 5 cards on the field or make your opponent run out of cards. Summoning creatures to a field with matching element will always give them a 2 health bonus, but put them on a field of the opposite element and they receive -2 health (also if each field has an underside that can be flippedusing spells and if your creature is on a matching field, and its flipped to a opposite element they lose 4 health instead of just 2). In most cases a 5 card win will occur more frequently. Because there are so many additional elements to the gameplay, it would take me all day to explain so ill just point out that there is a lot of different aspects to cards like race, affiliation, and special effects that all can work in combos giving the game so many different options of play for everyone. Gameplay gets a 9, its pretty stellar for a strategy game, and the online communities are huge, competitive, and are one of the most fun, mature, and supportive communities of a game I have ever played and I spent a good portion of 8 years playing MMORPGs. This game is just tops HOWEVER NOTE: The single player experience here is more or less a training for the online matches DO NOT BUY THIS GAME EXPECTING A STORY MODE. If you are then this game will be a 6 tops but if your into Competitive online gaming 9. Theres a few little BS modes like a paper rock scissor mode, and a mode that lets you put your hand under the camera with a card in it and it comes to life and you can poke it and drag it to a little circle to find info about it but all the fun ends there in about 2 minutes. Also note ONLINE MODE REQUIRES YOU TO REGISTER EVERY CARD IN YOUR DECK UNDER THE CAMERA. This is because it makes sure no one cheats online, however this also means the computer draws your cards for you, and though its a pain to dig through your deck to find cards the computer draws you wont care since it eliminates cheating. I would also like to point out that its mentioned in a lot of professional reviews that cards can be printed and used well from experience of playing this game online for 4 months i will tell you that either no one prints cards or the prints stopped working, because there is huge Trade By Mail communities and cards going for ridiculous amount of money on E-Bay. So my score still stands as a 9 in this field.
Graphics:
This is one part of the Eye of Judgment that i have to give two scores. If you play a lot of single player offline matches with friends and have Animations turned on the visuals are nice and crisp. The Animations are fluid, the boards are well done. Everything is nice and with Animations i give it an 8. However online not many people play with Animations on due to the increased time it takes and because of that i got to at least knock off a point or 2. Ill say 6.5 the boards are still beutiful but since its the same and the only thing changing is your creatures (WITHOUT ANIMATIONS ON, just reminding you this) id say 6 is best.
WITH ANIMATIONS ON YOU'LL SEE STUFF LIKE THIS.
WITH ANIMATIONS OFF THIS IS ALL YOU SEE THE ENTIRE ROUND.
Sound:
The game has a pretty annoying Metalcore soundtrack which is disappointing and the voice acting for some of the cards is annoying but overall id say its about a 6, nothing to go into detail about.
FINAL VERDICT:
The Eye of Judgment is pretty much a game that will only appeal to one of three types of gamers. The CCG nerds, The Strategy Elite, and the MMO Junkies. Though this is not an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) by any means, it does require purchase of cards and expansions to play set 2, like an MMO and it is mainly Online based so that is why it would appeal to them, the other two are obvious if you read the review. Overall this game delivers hands down to who its aimed for, but i dont think its really going to win over many other people. But for 69.99 (39.99 some place) The game does come with the Playstation Eye, A Starter Deck, and a Booster pack (Id like to take this spot to note that 2 of the cards in the Starter deck are worth 20 bucks by themselves).
8.5 / 10
) but good to hear that the model is similar enough for previous fans to migrate happily
