One Word Review
Naxxramas? Really? Blizzard tends to get a little bit up it’s own ass when it comes to names.
Today at PAX East Blizzard announced Curse of Naxxramas: A Hearthstone Adventure, a single player Adventure Mode for Blizzard’s super popular game Hearthstone. Naxxramas sounds like a screen name one would see in Call of Duty.
Like many of you, I have finally gotten into the Hearthstone beta. I waited for months to finally get my invite to the beta. The wait was that much more excruciating because my nephew already had his invite and was well on his way to Hearthstone supremacy. In the last few weeks I have played 15 – 20 hours of Hearthstone, I have most of it’s quirks under my belt. I usually make a couple of stupid mistakes every session that I play. Some of those mistakes end up causing me the match, but sometimes I am so far ahead that it would be near impossible to lose.
The beginning of a Hearthstone match is so much slower than the beginning of a match of Magic: The Gathering. I think that the tit-for-tat gameplay of Hearthstone does not mesh well with my more defensive play style.
Hearthstone seems like a game where you must always kill off the other character because once you don’t have any creatures on the table and your opponent has two or more; it is over.
M:TG seems, to me, to have more chances to come back from a deficit. I like that kind of game play. I love having a game where I am down 3 to 20 and I get a couple of good spells and a good creature and I come back to take the win with my piddly three point still holding strong.
Yesterday, I had one of the most frustrating games of Hearthstone, ever. I pulled three cards at the beginning costing; 5, 6, and 5 gems. Of course, I threw them back into the pile, only to have the same fucking cards come back out of the deck into my hand.
I really think that Hearthstone needs a system like M:TG has in videogame form; get a couple of chances to pull cards from the deck if you keep on getting shitty cards. M:TG even has a penalty system where if you pull too many times you can’t pull as many cards each following chance.
I also like the mana system that M:TG has instead of the generic gem system that Hearthstone implements. I like to be able to control my cards to more of an extent than Hearthstone has allowed.
Now, I will be the first to admit that many of my problems could be caused by the scarce number of cards that I have unlocked; none of my characters are over level 16. I am sure that I will unlock unique cards that will help my end game and I know that I will also unlock more of my favorite cards to help my chances of picking up those cards that I have become attached to.
Hearthstone is still a young game and Magic has been around for 20 years or so. I have all the confidence that Blizzard will continue tweaking the gameplay to suit it’s style of game. I know that a lot of people are in love with Hearthstone and I may have a minority opinion of the game. I would like to like Hearthstone, but I will always have Magic to keep me satiated in case Hearthstone never captures me.