Magicka 2 is a game that practically terrorises you into having a sense of humour about it. Visually it’s nothing less than a demented helter-skelter ride of gaudy chaos, in which accidents are clearly supposed to happen, and happen often. Trying to keep an eye on your character is one thing, trying to keep an eye on the trajectory of your spells is another, and trying to keep track of both of those things while also manoeuvring safely around your three co-op partners demands either a sixth sense or exhaustive communication.
When it isn’t being optically bewildering, Magicka 2 is bright, compelling and yes, often highly amusing. Although the campaign is just under five brisk hours long, it’s qualitatively consistent and provides replay opportunities as rigorously as its wizards cast spells. Campaign run throughs don’t just give you access to new gear, but discovering artefacts nets you access to all sorts of gameplay modifiers. Many of them are difficulty based – allowing you to customise the health and attack power of your team and your enemies – but others are gleefully idiotic, such as Sitcom Mode and modifiers that gift you with ludicrous speed or render your slain victims explosive.
Fans of the original game should be warned: this is very much business as usual. The elements, spells and spell combos remain unchanged, and thus the thrill of experimentation is going to be enjoyed by newcomers only. However, the frenzied nature of the combat essentially butchers your ability to experiment anyway, and the hysteria of battle is enough to coerce younger players into spamming the same old attacks in a blind panic, which turns the whole enterprise into a monotonous grind. A more thoughtful tutorial would help. In that department at least, this sequel is markedly inferior to its predecessor.
Aside from some incessant audio clipping, the game works fabulously well online, with rapid matchmaking and a straightforward party management system, which is just as well, because playing the game alone is a punishing endurance test that will only be of interest to militant obsessives. Without a trio of gallant companions, Magicka 2 is benchmark brutal, and often brazenly unfair. And there’s nothing amusing about that.
It may be the absolute antithesis of a groundbreaking sequel, but Magicka 2 is well-made and diverting enough to maintain the original game’s healthy following. Nobody is shooting for the moon here; just aiming to give the fans more of what they enjoyed.
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