November 9, 2012 12:26 PM EST
Magicka So far:
Let's dive right into the mechanics.
In Magicka there are 8 elements that you use. You move with your mouse and QWER and ASDF are all the elements. You can control something like 6 elements at a time, or charge up sort of. So you can use AA (Lightning) SS (Arcane, which gives extra damage and turns the attack into a beam) and RR (Cold) to make a Beam of Cold Lightning and Arcane. So there are quite a lot of differant combinations and spells you can make by combining certain elements. Combining Water and Cold creates Ice, combining Fire and Water creates Steam, and there might be another kind of element like that.
The Elements Are: Water (Makes things wet, pushes them away, wet things are freezable, when cast by itself is a shortish range cone), Life (heals things, hurts some others, cures poison, when cast by itself is a beam), Shield (Hard to use, can create large shields on self or in front of you, must be boosted constantly to be maintained and strong, can create armor, probably other stuff I haven't figured out yet when cast by itself creates shield in front of you), Cold (can freeze wet things and liquids, cast by itself it is a cone, slows things down if not wet), Lightning (When cast is a short range spell but when it connects with something it can branch out to other things, when things are electricuted they will freeze every second or so, making them move much, much slower, can be combined with a variety of elements like cold to create very effective spells, if you are wet you will cast it on yourself damaging you if you aren't wearing the Tron robe), Arcane (When cast by itself is a beam, can combine with other elements to create powerful but slow moving beam spells,), Earth (When cast by itself is an extremely deadly projective, can create deadly projectile spells that explode with an element on impact,), Fire (Cast as a cone, does good damage, sets things on fire), Steam (Cone, makes things wet and damages them, can be combined with lightning and arcane to make an extremely powerful beam), Ice (When cast by itself casts a barrage of ice projectiles in front of you, makes extremely effective large area of effect attack when used as area attack)
So those are all the elements, there are still some things to cover like elements not working with each other but I don't need to go into much more detail than to explain the elements.
As well as the elements are spells, which require that you use a special specific order of elements to cast it. There are some really cool ones like Summon Elemental, which makes a sort of cocoon, if you attack this thing with any element, it will awaken a powerful elemental with that element as a weapon. Easy spammability makes these fun and OP 
You can also cast lightning storms and raise dead, revive players, summon a phoenix that always seems to get you killed (It's like an airstrike, but I haven't figured out how to use it safely...), a lot of these are OP, like Lightning Bolt which you get early on and can spam at anything and kill them relatively easily with in a couple of hits (And you soon start to memorize the spell combos and cast them extremely quickly QRDSR QRDSR QRDSR QRDSR QRDSR QRDSR QRDSR QRDSR QRDSR QRDSR - Raising lots of Undead) though if you have players with you (and you should) if they don't have the Tron robe you will most likely kill them and they will be pissed and kill you back.
In this game there are tons of robes, most of them are in DLC but you get 6 or 7 in Vanilla Magicka I think. I haven't tried any of the DLC, but I want to. How could Magicka: Vietnam be bad? Anyway, you get a few different characters/robes/items that each can have quirks or good items. The Resovoir Robe gives you a Colt M1911 though it isn't that great, though he looks pretty badass. The Space Marine one which gives tons of health but you can't get healed and you heal over time, my favorite (And others as well it seems) the Tron robe which gives you immunity to lightning, heal with lightning, weakness to water and arcane, and you look pretty cool. Stuff like that, oh and the Reddit Robe
But yeah, it's really fun and there is some variety in the different characters/robes. All the dlc is pretty cheap, especially if you get it on sale. The big DLC are about 3-6 dollars and all the others are maybe 1-2 dollars. So you can get it all pretty cheap, getting the Magicka Complete pack isn't that expensive, though I didn't get it cause I got the 4-pack and that already gave me 1 extra copy I didn't necessarily need.
But anyway, the best thing about this game is the Co-op, trolling your friends and all the friendly fire and raging at your friends to revive you absolutely fantastic and hilarious, making the game much better than single player. Do not get this game unless you expect to find an unreliable 1 night stand with someone who may not ever play again or will go farther than you because you don't play for awhile. Get some steam friends to get it (Or get it for them, Magicka has been 75% off a lot of times and you can get the 4-pack for 7 dollars) and then play it with them. This game is fun Singleplayer but the whole experience is the co-op.
So the main bulk of the game (Or at least I think) is the Adventure mode which is a linear campaign experience which is full of references and comedy. It's really funny and if you skip through cutscenes you're an idiot. Things like being able to push a captain down a very 300-esque whole gaining the achievement THIS IS MAGICKA!!! after some related dialogue is awesome, as well as getting an M60 and gaining the achievement First Blood after killing someone with it, as well as a very appropriate picture for the achievement. As well as many other references to Dragonball Z (Yes it's that), Diablo, MLP, even Steam itself. This is the kind of game where you will be eagerly awaiting the next achievement and will be shift-tabbing to see what it was.
As well as adventure mode there are challenge and versus modes. Versus is PvP obviously, and challenge is a variety of differant co-operative... challenges. There's a survival, one where you survive on ice (Which can be melted and frozen back again), one that limits your elements you can use, and things like that.
All in all, Magicka is a full-featured game that is extremely fun to play solo but it's better together. The game is relatively cheap especially if it's on sale, so either convince those friends of yours to get it or do them a favor and pay the extra five bucks (If it's 75% off, which is when you should be getting this) to give 3 of your buddies a game to play with you. Just make sure they're tolerant to constant death and annoyance by everyone
