Imagine playing a trading card match with a fellow child (or 30-year-old Wizards of the Coast aficionado). Stats, stats, more stats… I tell someone I’m using this move while playing an elemental card to boost my – zzzZZZz. For me personally, trading cards never really caught my eye. The best I got was trying to get a Charizard Pokemon card to sell on eBay. But I reckon if the little monsters on the battle cards actually turned into interactive minions that beat the smack out of each other on a TV screen, I would have probably taken much more notice.
Which is exactly what Sony is doing with with
The Eye of Judgment, a trading card game that uses a proprietary technology called CyberCode. CyberCode is a special print that can be read by a compatible camera to produce images on a television screen. Its debut on Sony hardware is a trading card game, where placing battle cards underneath the new PlayStation Eye camera results in creatures jumping out of the cards and onto the game field.
It’s a great new use for the Eye Toy series of games that Sony is keen to revive. The game was showcased on PlayStation 3 hardware, but the cards – being manufactured by Hasbro worldwide – can also be played without the use of the console, I assume with the same kind of rules that are set in the video game iteration.
The game’s designer, Yusuke Watanabe, likens the creature rendering as more like collectable figures than lifelike beasts, and you can poke your finger underneath the Eye to ‘touch’ the creature on the screen. They react to your touch, either by striking a pose, performing a taunt or simply trying to shrug you off. The animations are very cool and the whole presentation reminds me of something off of the film
Small Soldiers.
Presentation aside, the nitty-gritty of the game is playing against an opponent. With the game you get a special mat that has a 3x3 square grid – this is where you and your friend place your character cards in alternating order, with the beasts and creatures automatically fighting each other if they face one another. If you place a card in the middle column facing left, for instance, and your opponent places their card directly underneath facing towards yours, they get a surprise attack on your party. The first person to conquer five of the nine squares on the grid is declared the winner.
The strategy is in the placement and the advance tactics of facing the cards – what do you do three moves ahead if your opponent ends up getting the upper hand? This is all stuff that was going through my head as I was going head-to-head against a fellow gamer at the scene, and it can be pretty addictive stuff. It’s also nice to have a computer work out your HP levels and battle statistics without having to refer to a massive rulebook or try and use maths.
