Magika is a new top down shooter/action game with light humor and fantasy elements from publisher Paradox. It promises up to 4 player co-op (with amusing friendly fire) and a colorful environment wrapped in a simple gameplay premise. However, it has two major flaws, and one massive flaw. System performance, controls, and online play.
Magika is pretty well drawn, with attractive art throughout. However, it is at the expense of performance; the game struggles to run at even a staggered pace, making it an exercise in frustration to play. Even on a reasonably high end machine, it struggles to hit even an acceptable frame rate. When even Dwarf Fortress can hit 60fps with 100 dwarves on a system, Magika has no excuses.
On the surface, controls were fairly well thought out. Some choices are completely out of touch with the others, such as some spells requiring space bar to be cast on the PC, while others require the third mouse button/Mouse wheel to be pressed. Requiring the mouse wheel alone is a questionable choice. It's worst effort is the spotty recognition of a key being hit; making actually casting spells beyond the basic elements another exercise in frustration.
Online play is not even working at present, which is totally inexcusable for a game which is primarily sold based on it's multiplayer aspects.
All in all, this one is a promising game which turned into a total flop. Wait at least six months before trying, maybe online play will be working, and the performance won't be so shoddy.
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