Thursday, March 8, 2012

Wizard Duel 2

Genre: Fighting
System: Windows
# Players: 1 - 2
Filesize: 3.9MB

Game Overview

Wizard Duel 2 is a free fighting game for two players. Each player controls a wizard who, for some reason or another, wants to kill the other wizard. Thus, they are having a duel on a tiny island somewhere. The wizards have the same repertoire of four spells, each representing one of the four classical elements.

Game Review

Let me start with my first gripe: the controls for this game are mouse, and arrow keys. Arrow keys, not WASD. I'm pretty sure that's a sin.

There are four spells in the game. The first is "Earth," which makes a pit of quicksand wherever you click. Place it where your opponent is standing, and there's a good chance he'll drown. The second is "Wind," which creates a tornado. This tornado may or may not throw your opponent into the ocean, where there's a good chance he'll drown. The third is "Fire," and it's the most commonly used spell. You shoot a fireball at your opponent, and if you hit him, he is briefly set on fire. The fourth and final spell is "Water," which raises the level of the ocean until only the tops of the hills are above water. If you do this when your opponent is far away from the hills, there's a good chance that he'll drown.

So those are your options: drown your opponent or set him on fire.

Despite the limited choices, this game is pretty fun. You and a friend can duke it out as wizards, each trying to catch the other in a lucky tornado or trap them in some well-placed quicksand.

Unfortunately, the game's controls are a bit wonky. You have full control of the camera, and that is good for casting the Earth and Wind spells. However, it makes casting the Fire spell rather difficult. It also just feels weird, especially if you're used to FPSes--or really any other 3D game. While strange, it is not too tough to get used to, but I still think it detracts from the gameplay.

The other problem is the lack of variety. Like I said, this game is pretty fun, but only for twenty minutes. There are only four spells, the strategies of which you and your friend will figure out quite quickly, and there is only one location. There are also no configurable gameplay options. So really, there's nothing to bring you back. You can play it once, enjoy it for a while, and then move onto other games. Also, it would be more interesting to get a third or fourth player in there.

Setting up for a network game should be easy: just host and join. However, I did find this LAN game to be a bit finnicky--it took a few tries to get the client to "see" the server. But overall, not a difficult process.

So, if you've got some downtime, give this LAN game a shot. After all, it's free, it's under 4MB, and it's got some very pretty water effects. Why not?

Overall, I call Wizard Duel 2 an OK game.

Wizard Duel 2 Free Download Page
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