If you’ve ever enjoyed a battling trading card game you should give Neverland Card Battles a try, even if it has nothing to do with Peter Pan or Michael Jackson.

Concept:  Magic the Gathering on a game board.

1.  I’m Bringing Board Games Back

First of all, I know that you play Mall Madness by yourself in between rounds of Gears 2, so you understand how cool it is that Neverland Card Battles utilizes a game board.  Accumulating territory by using your protagonist, Galahad, to walk over squares on the game map, produces the power (or mana if you’re a Magic: the Gathering fan) to cast spells like summoning monsters or hurling lightning.

Walk over your opponents land to steal it from him!

The Mall Madness level coolness comes when you figure out how use the game board to your advantage by blocking off thin paths with your monsters, summoning bases that give out bonuses to adjacent creatures or stealing your opponents land.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to go back to Magic: the Gathering without missing the element of strategy that moving my units on a game board brought.

2.  More Creatures than Noah’s Ark

I like how NCB isn’t tied down to any type of continuity when it comes to monster cards.  Monster cards, therefore, can run a wide range of sweetness, from samurai to robots or the fearsome Dogman you see below.

The fearsome Dogman.
Here’s a not at all real conversation I had with the game’s developer:

Jon: Hey Idea Factory, how ’bout you throw in some werewolves and some penguins…

Idea Factory:  how about a 9mm pistol toting penguin and Were-lions?

Jon:  I like where you’re going with this…

The variety of creatures, abilities and game board strategies make for some interesting decks, which you can all name.  Like me, my deck is named, “Zungre” which is short for: “Zungre Kicks Your Penis In.”  It’s comprised of fast creatures that steal my opponent’s land so they can’t even cast one damn spell, while I laugh heartily on my train ride to work, not attracting any women.

The whimsical Frog Ninja.

3.  Beat Up the Rich and Annoying!

Yuke’s knows how to create dislike for your opponents.  Their personalities can be boiled down into 3 loathsome chactagories: Egomaniac, Delusional, and Annoying Girl.  The combination of the script and voice acting help to get you somewhat invested in taking out your opponent.  But if you’re like me you’ll still find yourself saying, “Wait, am I fighting a little girl right now?”

Get away girl!

1.  Grinding for Cards is the New Grinding for Levels

Getting new cards by defeating rival Dominators is fantastic and wonderfully addicting.  However, I resented the fact that i had to play through a bunch of previous Dominators I had already whooped in order to compete with a new Dominator’s dramatic jump in difficulty, both in their base stats and in the amazingly powerful cards they owned.

This screen is what makes the game worth playing: earning all those new cards.

This is especially annoying when the “new” Dominators are stronger versions of Dominators you already beat.  I wish Yuke’s would had taken a little extra time to make a few more Dominators for me to fight.  Which leads me to my next request…

2.  More RPG, please

I would have liked to see my character’s abilities and base stats progress a little bit through the course of the game.  It seemed that everyone I defeated in the game came back stronger, but I somehow stayed at the same level.

By the time you have to face Hellgaia, you’ll probably be wishing you could have leveled up a bit.

And while where on the topic of characters, Galahad is okay, but I would have really liked the option to modify his stats, or better yet, create my own Dominator with a unique look and special abilities.  Even something as simple as Puzzle Quest’s different classes would have been nice.

3.  Galahad, Stop Talking

You know what’s worse than getting beat up?  Getting beat up and then getting preached at.  NCB’s protagonist Galahad doesn’t understand this.  He always takes time to break down why each of his opponents’ life philosophies suck after he crushes them in a card battle.  You know it’s bad when you’re the one giving the beat down, and you want your character to shut up.

That’s the satisfied smile of a man who just talked down on another man’s worldview.

I was also annoyed by the fact that I could use kill spells on my own creatures, damaging spells on myself and wasn’t prevented from using a spell on a creature it would have no effect on.  Just little things like this can make the learning process quite frustrating and maybe, cost a player a battle. 

If you didn’t read the review, scrolled down to the review score, and consider it a courtesy that you’re even reading this concluding paragraph, I want you to know a couple things:

Firstly, don’t feel condemned. I do it too.

Secondly, Neverland Card Battles is an enjoyable game.  If you’re a fan of Magic: the Gathering, Yu-gi-oh, or any other collectible card game, you shouldn’t let this title escape your notice.

In this week’s episode, we join host Jonathan Zungre, Dan Landis, and Beau Rosser as they discuss Ripten’s top three news stories of the previous week. During the break, be amused at a man’s tale about the capture of a polar bear.

This week’s playlist includes Resistance 2, Gears of War 2, Neverland Card Battles, Ninjatown, and Saint’s Row 2.

So sit back and enjoy Episode 6 and all its technical difficulties glory. If something sounds funny, don’t worry -– it was edited that way on purpose.

Everything happens for a reason.

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.