PSP Preview: Neverland Card Battles

by Jonathan Zungre on October 1, 2008 at 11:23 pm

Dig Magic the Gathering? Awesome, I love it too. Dig Yu-gi-oh? Cool…i guess. I mean, you are about 10 years old right? You’re 61? Ok, well you play with your grand kids, I’m sure. You play against your reflection in the mirror?! That’s kinda creepy. I mean, uh, that’s fine… ok, ok, don’t get mad! Ok, listen, don’t shake your Oldsmobile keys at me, old man!

I was just trying to say that if you like either of those games you may want to click this blue “read more” button thingy and check out Neverland Card Battles for the PSP. Just sayin’.

Sometimes evil gods of chaos break out of their magical cages and, sometimes, you gets summoned with other good guys to lock the bastard back up again. Rarely, however, do you need to beat the crap out of the other good guys to earn the right to fight the evil god. In Neverland Card Battles, only the last man standing gets the right to fight evil god Hellgaia and his monloging ways. And sometimes games with Neverland in the title have nothing to do with Peter Pan or Michael Jackson.

Neverland Card Battles reminds me trading card juggernaut, Magic the Gathering. You gather manna, summon creatures and use spells to kick your opponent right in his year-one-at-Hogwarts face. (Hogwarts not actually featured.)

The biggest difference between the two card based games is that NCB takes place on a grid map and manna accumulation doesn’t come from land cards in your deck but rather from owning spaces on the grid map. Another difference is that you as the spellcaster and the creatures are both represented on the map, and both of you can attack and travel around the map to capture grid spaces. Want to cast the hot-as-fire angel chick? You’d better own 13 squares on the map, so walk over some of your opponents and steal them.

One of the hurdles I had getting my friends into Magic the Gathering is that it takes a bit of time to learn the stages of gameplay and when you can play certain spells. Honestly, if you don’t have someone around that knows the rules completely then you could be playing wrong without ever knowing it.

The gridded game maps and an interface that walk you through each phase of gameplay eliminate these problems from Neverland Card Battles, and seem to cut the learning curve from MTG’s “quite long” to “not so long at all, really” (about 15 minutes). Accessible equals sexy.

As a footnote, I’m used to Magic’s sword and sorcery theme, so when I saw one of the 200 NCB cards called the Scientist pull out a 9 millimeter pistol and cap me, i was quite surprised. Happy surprised.

From what I saw, NCB’s single player and ad hoc multiplayer has enough sweetness to justify a captivated stare from card battling aficionados. It’ll cap you right in your chest for 29.99 on October 28th.

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