Spent the weekend with some friends at my sister's place. We had some down time, and I'd brought the PS4 for Jackbox games, so I sat down and played some Magicka. Our friends thought it was pretty cool, so the three of us went through the first half of the game on normal, then the second half on hard, and then the first half on hard to round off the whole hard-mode experience :P
This was the first time I'd played Magicka 2 multiplayer, and it really holds up to the single player experience. 4-player mode has some pretty ludicrous amounts of enemies at times, it felt, but so does 3-player mode (just not to quite the same extent). 2-players felt the most player-tilted in terms of number of enemies Vs. how strong you as two separate entities are, but that may just be down to which levels we 2/3/4-playered respectively (depending on who was awake at the time :P ).
Hard mode REALLY don't fuck around. You can get through normal mode fairly comfortably without regarding mechanics like shields or weapon enchantments too heavily, but DAMN do you really gotta think with everything you have on hard mode. The game REALLY wants to kill you, and it tells you exactly how it's gonna do it (you can see exactly what modifiers hard mode and BANANAS!? (very hard) mode impact on the game. I also feel like some encounters have more enemies in them, but that may just be my imagination. Still loads of fun though. It really forces you to think strategically, and not just go in beams-blazing. I cannot imagine doing hard-mode in single player with how damn hard some of the hard-mode bosses are. BANANAS!? mode is like literally twice as difficult as hard mode, so I cannot imagine playing through that in any capacity ever XP
As a side note, perhaps it's just nastolgia talking, but I still liked the jokes in Magicka 1 better than this one. Magicka 2's main story is a little better nuanced (for what that's worth), but Magicka 1's story campaign modes really beat it out in terms of flavor (I don't think there have been any mission DLC's for Magicka 2 ;_;).
Verdict: Still Very Recommended. It's a fantastic game to play with people who are familiar with gaming. If you have an evening with the lads, this is a great one to crack out to see just how coordinated you are at action games.
This was the first time I'd played Magicka 2 multiplayer, and it really holds up to the single player experience. 4-player mode has some pretty ludicrous amounts of enemies at times, it felt, but so does 3-player mode (just not to quite the same extent). 2-players felt the most player-tilted in terms of number of enemies Vs. how strong you as two separate entities are, but that may just be down to which levels we 2/3/4-playered respectively (depending on who was awake at the time :P ).
Hard mode REALLY don't fuck around. You can get through normal mode fairly comfortably without regarding mechanics like shields or weapon enchantments too heavily, but DAMN do you really gotta think with everything you have on hard mode. The game REALLY wants to kill you, and it tells you exactly how it's gonna do it (you can see exactly what modifiers hard mode and BANANAS!? (very hard) mode impact on the game. I also feel like some encounters have more enemies in them, but that may just be my imagination. Still loads of fun though. It really forces you to think strategically, and not just go in beams-blazing. I cannot imagine doing hard-mode in single player with how damn hard some of the hard-mode bosses are. BANANAS!? mode is like literally twice as difficult as hard mode, so I cannot imagine playing through that in any capacity ever XP
As a side note, perhaps it's just nastolgia talking, but I still liked the jokes in Magicka 1 better than this one. Magicka 2's main story is a little better nuanced (for what that's worth), but Magicka 1's story campaign modes really beat it out in terms of flavor (I don't think there have been any mission DLC's for Magicka 2 ;_;).
Verdict: Still Very Recommended. It's a fantastic game to play with people who are familiar with gaming. If you have an evening with the lads, this is a great one to crack out to see just how coordinated you are at action games.