A Hero In The Hand

For Father's Day, my son got me the Marvel Trading Card Game for my Nintendo DS. I tried it out briefly then but put it aside when I started my marathon of Potter reading over the rest of the summer. We'll, I've finally gotten back to playing this video game - and man is it a challenge!

The game is an electronic version of Upper Deck's Vs (versus) collectible-card game. The cards, of course, feature the characters from the Marvel comic books (folks like the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Spider-Man, the X-Men, etc.). Now, unlike games like Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon which I had seen the card games before playing the electronic versions, this one was brand new to me. And the game has some very complex mechanics that take a little while to master. The first few times playing in the storymode of this video game, I got my butt handed to me by the very capable AI opponent you face. The tutorial in the game was a little hard to follow, so I actually had to go back and read the book and then visit the CCG site that had a better tutorial to get a handle of how things are done.

Even after all that, it is still going slow. I lose at least as many times as I win (sometimes more). I still on the first arc of many arcs in the storymode. And I've barely begun to modify my starter deck by purchasing additional packs of cards with points won from the battles.

All in all, this is a good thing. That means I'll definitely get tons of playing hours from this game - making it well worth the money spent. There are also puzzle challenges (ones you have to win in a single hand) and some stand-alone battles that allow you to win new character avatars. There also is a mulitplayer mode and wireless mode, allowing you to challenge others who have the game too. That might be fun. The game does only limit you to having five decks made up (and you cannot give them unique names beyond 'deck 1', 'deck 2', etc.) but something tells me I won't be doing as much deck experimentation as I do in the Yu-Gi-Oh games.

This is a lot of fun - and a chance to explore this CCG without having to spend tons and tons of money on cards. I wouldn't mind the same company putting out the DC Comics based version of Vs (versus) in the DS format too - especially now that I'm learning the mechanics.