Magicka Review: Vlad Is Definitely Not a Vampire

Stay a while and read about a game called Magicka. It is a game about Wizards and Vamp-. Well, a game about Wizards. Of Mages on magical mischievous misadventures. It is an older game that should get more attention.

You will channel eight elements to craft deadly spells and solve puzzles, and more than likely, zapping, burning, smashing, and freezing yourself now and then. Face the foes yourself or fight them with three friends. Or ramp up the chaos as you all sling spells everywhere. 

Magicka is currently available on PC for $9.99.

Story – First Lessons From Vlad

The story begins with a narration from the senior tutor of the Order of Magick, Vlad. Who is most certainly not a vampire. He tells you about an old evil wizard, Grimnir, who sought dangerous power. And the Orc Warlord, Khan, who threatens the lands of Midgard. And how you need to help stop it all. 

But before you begin questing, you need a dunka dunka to learn Magicka. As you will notice quickly, the game likes to be silly, with all the characters speaking Swedish-sounding gibberish, numerous references to pop culture and other media, and a bit of meta-humor. The dunka dunka mentioned earlier is a surprise party for your adventure outing. 

Suprendir!

Unfortunately, one of your Wizard classmates messed around with some Magicks and destroyed the floor beneath you, causing you to fall to the basement. Don’t worry, your classmates sent their pet, Behold the Watcher, to come and find you. Hopefully, nothing will happen to either of you.

From there, the tutorial begins as you grab your staff and sword and learn the ways of Magick to get out from the basement and head out on your journey to Havindr to aid the king. You will encounter orcs, goblins, trolls, and dark wizards. Worst of all, the evil druids who say “Ni”. 

In this party instead of raising the roof they lowered the floor.

Gameplay – Turn to Page 2 in Your Spell Book

Magicka is an isometric action game that uses an ingenious, simple-to-learn, difficult-to-master system. Holding the left mouse button for movement, shift and left click for melee, the QWERASDF keys, and the space bar to cast spells. Each of those keys represents an element. You can charge and mix up to five of these elements to either strengthen or combine the elements. 

By right-clicking, you cast the spell toward where your cursor is at. By pressing on the mouse wheel, you cast the spell on yourself. The space bar casts around you like a circle. If you channel the elements, then hold shift and left click, you will enchant your melee weapon.

I wield the not so secret fire.

The elements are water, life (which you use for healing/damaging undead), shield, cold, electricity, arcane, earth, and fire. By channeling one fire element, you will make a small fire blower. If you charge five fires, you will make your staff into a flame thrower. Channeling earth and fire will make an explosive fireball, water and cold to make ice shards, and so on. 

If you cast certain spells on yourself, like fire, you can dry your wet robes or catch them on fire if they are already dry. If you are already wet, a charge lighting will get you a painful zap, and cold will turn you into an ice cube. You can use elements like water to set up other attacks to freeze or electrocute enemies. A good thing to know when playing online is that friendly fire is always on. So don’t be wagging your wands all willy-nilly. 

Unlimited Power!

Cast This Spell to Crash to Desktop

As you can imagine, this system will get chaotic fast and exponentially, so the more enemies and friends you have in a battle. Your screen will be full of spells and enemies, so one piece of advice to control the chaos is to cast shield and earth on yourself to give you enough time to think about what you need to cast next. Also, holding multiple element charges slows your movement speed, so be careful if you need to dodge. And if you happen to die, don’t worry. You can find glowing blue fairies that will revive you, but you have to listen to them.

They dunka dunkad too hard here.

One of the few issues I have with the gameplay is some of the camera angles. In some fights, it gets easy to lose track of where you are and could end up stuck behind a building or wall with little way of knowing. Lastly, and this could perhaps be my own experience and not the average, despite the game being out for a long time, it still crashes now and then. The game crashed on me about five or six times in my playthrough for the review, but your results may vary. I would have been very frustrated if I was playing online.   

Graphics & Audio – Cartoony Casting

Magicka uses a cartoony style to fit into the zany world of Midgard. All the wizards wear classic robes with their faces hidden by their hoods. Any time you start the game, you can choose your wizard robe color and style with some DLC to buy more. Some Wizard robes come with unique items like a different staff or melee weapon, and some of these can be a bit overpowered, like the M16 machine gun. Yes, you read that right. There is a machine gun in a game about wizards.

Of Elvish make of course!

The game also has some cartoony gore, with enemies splattering into pulp as you launch boulders their way at Mach 6. Or explode into bloody mist if you cast arcane beams at them. Although cartoony, I can see how the gore might deter parents from showing their kids.

As for audio, the sound effects are excellent. With each element, you can hear the charge from them. The way sound changes from a little Magical zap to a smiteful thunderbolt shows the difference in elemental charges. The sound also does a great job of letting you know when spells are ready via audio cues.

He bravely ran away, brave brave sir wizard!

Music is okay. It tries to go for generic fantasy music as the setting makes fun of typical fantasy tropes. But because of that, the music unsurprisingly ends up sounding generic. The music is relaxing to listen to the various woodwinds playing in the colorful, bright background.