Infinity Wars Review

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I have to admit that I installed Infinity Wars without expecting too much of it. With two high profile TCG games already on Steam (Duels of Champions, Magic: The Gathering), it’s hard to imagine how a brand new game could ever compete with these leviathans. As it turns out, Infinity Wars does many things as good as these franchises do, and some even better.

Every good TCG has to feel overwhelming to a new player. It has to have a plethora of interesting systems, many numbers to keep track of and loads (seriously, loads) of cards to toy around with. To a casual player, all of this might seem dull, but the hardcore of the lot, and those that stick around to see what becomes of it, soon see the value of the features mentioned above. It’s the depth of the game that will keep you coming for more. In card games, the gameplay stays adamant throughout its lifetime. There are no dynamic elements to it, other than a remixed play mode or two. Thus, if there’s no meat on the bone, the players will stop playing – simple enough.

The developers at Lightmare Studios have been painfully aware of this, and made it their mission to create a deep, engrossing universe with quality cards that will keep duelists coming back for months and years on end. Now, I could just say that this is a brilliant card game and be done with it. I wouldn’t even feel guilty, because it just doesn’t need any more explanation than that. There’s no point in leaving you guys hanging, though, so I’ll finish the review first.

As a longtime player of Ubisoft’s Duels of Champions, I was expecting to see something similar in this game. Sure, I heard about the fancy animated cards, but didn’t think much of it. Up until this game, all the TCGs were pretty much alike. A unique system here and there, maybe a metagame of sorts and all wrapped up in a neat, inviting package. Infinity Wars pulls a couple of unexpected twists and delivers an almost entirely different experience.

There are many more factors to take into account than there are in other similar games. For example – aside from the health meter, you also need to consider your deck’s morality level. If morality drops down to zero, you’re dead meat. The same goes for health, naturally. As far as pure numbers go, there’s a lot more to it than just health/morality, but I’ll leave these factors for you to uncover. Moving on now. Another interesting thing about IW is that there are three fields where creatures can be played. Support, Offensive and Defensive. The latter are painfully obvious, but Support serves as a locker room of sorts, where units can take a breath between operations and rejuvenate their health. There’s also a Command field, where your Commander units reside. Trying to explain all of these would serve no purpose here, so I’ll leave you to the tutorials’ mercy.

Speaking of which, tutorials are painfully extensive and loaded to the brim with details. Hell, you won’t even be able to play with actual people until you’ve reached the fifth level. Which is good, on one hand. This game has some fairly complicated systems and learning all of them, old school style, would hardly ever work. However, this also means that you’ll essentially be locked in the trenches with the boring old AI for the first couple of hours. Good thing there’s an expansive singleplayer campaign, then! This will provide you with money, boosters and knowledge of what’s waiting for you on the other side of level 5. Even better, the AI isn’t as rigidly programmed as it usually is in TCGs, meaning that there’s a lot of space for maneuvering in solo matches. So fret not, young Padawan, there will always be something to do in this game.

There’s one more fascinating thing about Infinity Wars, and this one just might be the deal breaker for some players. See, when fighting, you and your opponent both play cards at the same time. There’s virtually no way for you to reliably predict what the enemy is going to do next. This means alot when it comes to evaluating the dynamic of the game, as the duels are much more random. I can understand why this might seem as a bad thing, yes, but it really isn’t. Using this technique, the developer made every match interesting, disregarding what kind of an opponent you’ve been matched with.

To finish this review in a victorious tone, this is a free game and there’s absolutely no need for you to spend a dime to be competent when playing. Sure, you can buy yourself some fancy card covers, avatars and similar purely aesthetic thingies, but cards themselves are always available using the earnable currency. Another great thing is that free trading is available from the get-go of your online career (level 5, then) – something the other competitors have ditched or didn’t even think about implementing.

A definitive recommendation to just about everybody.

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