Bringing Cards to Life!

The Eye of Judgment is the game that got the local PS3 community excited about the EyeToy by Sony. Why is everyone so excited about the game? Basically, if you have played trading card games and wished that the cards could come alive, this is the game for you.

Eye of Judgment is developed by Wizards of the Coast which means they are backed by the experience of one of the most successful TCG ever, Magic: The Gathering. If you are thinking it is the same as M:TG, then you are wrong, the game plays more like a cross-breed between chess and a M:TG.

So what is in the box? It is quite impressive once you lay it out. You have the camera stand, the playmat, the EyeToy, the game disc, a starter deck and a bonus booster pack.

This is basically everything you need to play the game. As you can see from the play mat, you have nine squares and the game is won when you conquer five of those spaces.

You conquer spaces by summoning creatures using the mana generated every turn. Sounds confusing? Don’t worry, it is simple once you get the hang of it after 2-3 games.

The game is bundled with a tutorial videos but I found it a chore to sit through them. When the video begins by teaching you how to shake your opponent’s hands, you know you are in for a long night.

The camera is pretty responsive and can usually scan and identify the cards without any problem. However, there has been cases where dimly lighted rooms and glare can cause a problem when playing the game.

I tried using card sleeves but that caused another set of problems when the camera sometimes refuse to recognise a card because there is glare on the plastic sleeves.

Aligning the camera is also tricky at times. I got it to work easily at home but when I put it over at Toybox, the camera needed to be placed at an angle before it is aligned properly with the mat. Weird.

At about RM320-350, you get the EyeToy of course and this is nifty little device. It has good resolution, capture pretty good pictures and the applications planned by Sony seems to be really interesting. Of course, at launch, the most impressive remains to be Eye of Judgment. You can download EyeCreate from the PlayStation Network but it is a fun software for 5 minutes at best.

The animation is pretty good and the card interacts in a certain way when you do some hand movement. Other than that, you are looking at cool looking sprites which goes into a Final Fantasy-like battle scene when they do battle. It is a cool for the first few games but after that, you will just tend to turn off that option to speed up games.

The game play will be familiar to you if you have played TCGs before. You summon creatures, creatures do battle, there is damage and the victor is decided.

The game will probably last a while. Wizards will be releasing new expansion and this current expansion, Biolith Rebellion is already keeping players busy. They have booster packs and theme decks to buy. Current theme decks are Water Barrage, Fire Crusader, Wood Swarm, Earth Emperor and Biolith Scourge.

My final verdict: If you like card games, dreamt about seeing cards come alive, then you need to get this.