From the very first time I played the original Magic Carpet, I've maintained that it is the best first-person action game ever made. Doom 2, you say? Gimme a break. A pathetic roster of eight weapons and only one thing to do - shoot. That all fine and dandy, but I'm saying that pound for pound, feature for feature, Magic Carpet can't be beat for its combination of strategy, variety of weapons and enemies, and good old fashioned shooting and killing.
Magic Carpet had so much stuff to do that it turned off those folks who didn't want to spend the time learning all of the intricacies of the game, not to mention that fairly difficult flying interface. But once it's learned, it's simply the best, period. Now Bullfrog has just come out with the much-anticipated Magic Carpet 2 and the wait was definitely worth it. With more monsters, more spells and a better interface, fans of the original Carpet are sure to love this one.
The storyline in Magic Carpet 2 picks up where Magic Carpet left off. You're a sorcerer's apprentice who has just saved the world, and you're taking a well-deserved vacation. But a Demon Lord from the Netherworlds has decided that ruling his own kingdom-of-the-damned wasn't satisfying enough, so now he wants our world as well. So it's back onto the carpet again to save the entire civilized world. But this time the apprentice has a little interdimensional help from his old master Kafkar, who exerts whatever influence he can along the way in the form of advice and help on completing certain goals.
First, let's review how the Magic Carpet games work. The player uses the magic carpet to cruise around the land, destroying any terrible monsters that happen to be terrorizing the countryside. The player has a variety of spells which he uses to do things like destroy the monsters, go faster, become invisible and build castles. Building castles is important because they give you a place to recharge your power and store mana. You acquire mana whenever you kill a bad guy, or whenever you destroy an enemy's castle wall. You can also find it just lying around. The more mana you have the more powerful you become.
The biggest difference between Magic Carpet and its sequel lies in the overall structure of the game. In the first game the player had to accumulate a specific amount of mana on a level before advancing to the next level. While each level required a different approach, the goal and landscape were basically the same on all levels. Magic Carpet 2 has mission-based levels to complete, so instead of trying to capture a certain amount of mana as in the original game, Carpet 2 requires that the player accomplish certain tasks. So in one level, the player may have to fly to a certain magical point which triggers some other action, like releasing a swarm of bees. Then the player has to kill all the bees, which then triggers the exit point.
Of course, these specific missions aren't the only thing to do in each level - there are also other wizards flying around, hidden traps and treasures, and lots and lots of bad guys that simply exist to be killed. The main objective is shown by an arrow on your map screens, and your mentor Kafkar will provide instructions along the way in text form. The trouble is that while Kafkar will give you the final objective, he may neglect to inform you that there are a couple of tasks to complete before you reach that point. The designers have included a help function you can toggle on and off which will tell you what your next immediate goal is. I'm sure that some folks will love this mission-based style and some folks won't. I liked it in some levels and wasn't too fond of it in others, but it's not a bad feature, it's just a matter of taste.
Where Magic Carpet 2 really takes care of business is in the new spells department. There are lots of new spells to use, and a redesigned interface makes them much easier to cast. This time around each spell has three different experience levels, each being more powerful than the one before it. In the original, each version of a spell, like the fireball and the rapid fireball, were individual spells. In Carpet 2, the rapid fireball is a more advanced version of the spell, so there's more room for other nifty weapons, like the whirlwind, the gravity well, and fool's mana. And the interface using these spells has been streamlined like it really should have been all along. Any number of spells can be assigned to either of the two fire buttons, and all you have to do is hold the shift key while pressing a button to cycle through those spells, so you never have to leave the gaming screen in order to call up a new spell.
Unfortunately, one old problem remains from the Magic Carpet interface. The menu where you manage your spells (assigning spells to buttons, choosing various levels of spells, etc.) requires the use of your mouse or joystick. This means that you're taking a serious risk if you drop out of the game screen to fiddle with your spells, since the action will continue while you're gone - unless you pause the game. I'm not real fond of this, but that's the way it was designed.
Magic Carpet 2 also includes some new monsters to battle as well as updating the old ones. New on the lineup are spiders which snare you in their web while they get close in for a bite, zombies which steal your mana and your spells, Cymerrians which turn into castle-eating bugs when destroyed, devils which hop around quickly throwing fireballs while laughing at you, fireflies which are night versions of bees, goats which do nothing but wait to be killed for their mana, multi-headed hydras which must be killed head by head, leviathans that hide beneath the water waiting for you to get close enough to attack, moon dwellers which are mechanical-looking devices that come down from the sky to steal mana and attack with lightning, rock-headed sentinels which shoot fireballs and are super tough to destroy, and troglodytes which throw boulders. Most of the old enemies are back, but they've been revamped to look better. For example, instead of just a series of black globs, the worm now has markings on its back and pincers for a head, and the dragon now has colorful horns and moves in a more erratic pattern, making it harder to hit.
The graphics aren't much different than the original, but the designers say that the game now plays 70% faster. Actually, they don't mean the player flies that much faster, but the frame rate has been increased, and boy-howdy it does play smoothly. You're still going to need to have a super-system to run the hi-res mode well, but the low-res mode looks exceptional and plays like you wouldn't believe. The castles look as they always have and the landscape in the daytime looks the same, but Carpet 2 now has night missions and cavern areas. The night missions have an eerie glow, and the caverns have ceilings and walls to close you in, which makes fighting enemies a lot more difficult since there's less room to move around. Since both of these areas have little light, whenever a weapon that glows (like a fireball) is fired, the projectile has light sourcing on it that glows on the walls and ground as it flies along. It's an extremely nice effect. And when spells are cast that affect the terrain itself, the technology that is used to morph to landscape is unbelievable. You'll be flattening hills, raising volcanoes and cutting holes in the ground with the casualness of Zeus.
Experienced Magic Carpet players may find the beginning of the game a bit easy. There's only 25 levels to explore and I found that I breezed through the first fifteen. I did run into some pretty stiff competition after a while, but the initial levels just weren't that tough. First-time players will find plenty to challenge them, but if you got good at the original game, you shouldn't have much trouble with the first set of levels in Carpet 2. Just think of how easy the first ten levels on the original Carpet would be after you've played to level thirty. The games play so much like each other, after playing the original, starting Carpet 2 is like starting at the beginning of Carpet 1. But don't get too used to blowing through the levels. When I got into the second half of the game, there were levels that had all of the wizards establishing huge castles, and the goal of the level is basically destroy everyone else. Things quickly turned into an all-out brawl with every spell you could imagine flying all over the place, volcanoes were springing up everywhere, and craters were being tossed around, not to mention fireballs, meteors, lightning bolts and various and sundry monsters roaming around. The original, as good as it was (and as I stated before, it was the best) never got as good as Carpet 2 gets. When the smoke settles after a melee in Carpet 2, the landscape has been totally changed from what it was at the beginning of the level and you know that you've been in a fight. I was worried that the other wizards weren't going to be very aggressive, but after I had my castle assaulted by volcanoes, flying meteors, tremors and everything else, I knew that the designers have made these computer players play for keeps.
Magic Carpet 2, plain and simple, rocks. It proves that Bullfrog is still in the top of its form (I was starting to worry after Hi-Octane) and makes the best games in the business. With all of the new spells and abilities, Carpet 2 gives more of a sense of real power than the original. If you've never played Magic Carpet, skip the original for now and get Carpet 2. If you have the original, Carpet 2 has so many new features, you'd be insane to miss out on it. Carpet 2 has multiplayer capabilities and with new weapons like the invisible mines and fake mana that shoots at the player trying to claim it, this is the game to get for multiple players. Like I said before, whether or not you like the new mission-based structure is a matter of taste, but Magic Carpet 2 has beaten out the original Magic Carpet to become the best first-person action game ever.
