Magicka was written in January 2011 by Arrowhead Game Studios. By odd coincedence it's part of the only pair of series on my favorite series list to come out in the same month and it happens to be with a series containing the word "Magica" in the title that being "Puella Magi Madoka Magica". The game is set in a world that is a parody of Medieval Fantasy worlds, where up to 4 Wizards, the players must go on comical adventures to stop various villains threatening the lands, usually villains that seem to want to impose order to try and create some peace in the incredibly chaotic land of Midgard but do so via some form of tyranny or species based oppression. The game is well regarded in gaming circles for it's innovative and chaotic gameplay which is infamous for it's random bouts of team-killing, crazy out of control elemental combinations, and general clownfoolery.
3 Reasons I love it:
1: Magicka's gameplay system really speaks to me. The game gives you 8 elements and you can combine up to 5 of them to create effects that are the intuitive combination of your elements, which also interact with enemies as you might expect. Use water to wet an opponent then use lightning to have the lightning chain to them and do lots of damage for instance. The game doesn't have a mana system, you can cast spells basically as fast as your fingers can move but in exchange you are a very squishy wizard that can die from enemies or your own spells very quickly. My reflexes are quite poor, however Magicka isn't really a reaction game because you honestly can't react fast enough to deal with the game's intuitive style. Instead when you get good at Magicka it feels more like what I've heard expert fighting game players describe what high level fighting games are like; it's much more a sense of strategy and inutiting what your opponent will do next, as both players reactions are going to be comparable. Magicka combat when it gets hard is not about concious thought, it's about intuiting the elements effects and letting it just sort of flow. One of the strongest combinations in the game is the steam beam with arcane, lightning and steam in a particular proportion. I don't consciously think when I want to use it however and I don't even feel myself pressing the buttons, the game just becomes an extension of the flow in my brain. It both works with how my brain works and is also weirdly relaxing.
2: This game is so funny. Granted playing it wasn't like I was ever rolling on the flood laughing, but like I was kept amused throughout and that was only in single player. The world just has an infectatious energy, an energy made of goofy references, running gags, and over the top-ness. It's like playing a video game form of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And in multiplayer, it's famous for constant shenanigans and antics of accidental or intentional team-killing and funny magic interactions. I would go so far as to say Magicka is probably the series I consider most consistently funny on my favorites list. There are other comedic series and these even often have funnier heights, but Magicka is just so consistently engaging. Its humor is also endearingly dated. It's full of references to memes from the 00s to early 10s, like a more innocent age of the internet. There's references to things like "It's Over 9000!", "THIS. IS. SPARTA!" and "KHANNNNNNNNNN". It gives me such nostalgia.
3: I've seen some people actually downplay the story and lore of Magicka as basically irrelevant. Indeed the trailer poked fun at it being generic fantasy and Totalbiscuit in his WTF is on the video said facetiously "Not that we really care about the story elements, I certainly don't. If you do I think you might be doing it wrong." That said I think the story for Magicka is kind of ingenius. I'm the type of person that likes things to be neat and orderly and I would say Magicka's story on a basic level is trying to make an argument for the usefulness of chaos; or more particularly that chaos/nature, represented by the wizards, is a force for discovery, fun and possibility. The antagonists in Magicka are generally presented as being more serious or more orderly or both then the wizards, complete "stick in the mud" as it were. In real life chaos is dangerous, the potential of chaos leads to possible negative outcomes, but it's neccesary for growth. I think this is woven in both the story and the gameplay, a gameplay which priortizes letting go of one's sense of safety and security by sticking to what is known and what is conscious thought, things which will make the game very hard to play. Instead one must be willing to embrace chaos as much as possible to flow with the game.
3 Flaws:
1: Magicka 1 was infamous for it's glitches. The Magicka fandom has become almost endeared with Magicka's glitches, but it can be relatively debillitating to play. Now the game is currently is relatively stable in single-player, although there are still glitches in multiplayer that can completely stop progress in the game like game crashes or enemies needed to progress simply not showing up.
2: Magicka 2 I consider a fairly disappointing follow up to the original Magicka. While the story was quite good and followed the first and the events of Wizard Wars well, but the gameplay felt signifigantly worse. In an objective sense the second game's gameplay is far more balanced. One can't instantly gib more enemies, and it's vastly harder for a team of 4 players to die, to the point that even a group of 4 complete noobs messing around and engaging in RDM will very rarely get a complete party kill. That said the chaos of Magicka's gameplay system was actually a very strong thematic element to it's world. The ability to die or kill quickly is what led to the game feeling so intuitive and smooth to play. In my opinion, it's somewhat against the central theme of both games, the embracing of chaos, if the gameplay is so much slower and priotizing actively thinking about your options as opposed to needing to intuit the answer quickly.
3: Magicka lacks much in the way of characterization. Vlad and Grimnir are engaging enough characters, but many of the characters including the nameless player wizards have very little characterization save for being bad at socializing. This isn't really the point of the game so it's not like the creators tried something and it failed, and I don't even really need a series to have deep characterization to enjoy something, I am more of a plot person in general. That said it does limit the potential of the series as it keeps one from engaging strongly with the personalities in the game since most of them are limited to a few gags.
My Favorite Part:
My favorite part of Magicka is the fight against Grimnir. It's the best fight in the game. It's challenging but unlike some of the stuff in Chapter 11, it's challenging in a very fair way, and really gives the feeling of fighting a master wizard who can use the same 8 elements and mostly the same magicka as the player. The fight is hard enough that even the devs struggled against it, yet every move can be fairly and reasonably countered even by a single player if you are able to follow the cues and not try to go against the flow of the fight. Grimnir is also despite his extremely limited apperaence, a really good villain, and a good antagonist for the game.
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