I'm a seasoned card game player. I tend to pick up new games as they come out and convince my wife or a friend to try it out for a while. Versus is probably my favorite system with Magic being an old faithful, but I've played Yu-Gi-Oh, Dragonball Z, Fullmetal Alchemist, Legend of the Five Rings, Warlord, and others. I love video game representations of these types of games because I'm not one to frequent cards shops for a game, so having computer opponents is a win in my book. Plus, there's usually some career mode to play through where winning unlocks new cards and opens up deck building possibilities that one can't come by without spending lots of money on real cards.

So here we have an odd mix of the two, a real card game that you need to spend money on to build decks yet played out on a video game system. Technically this game could be played just fine without a PS3, but then it loses some of its allure. The allure is that the new PS3 Eye can read the cards from your deck when placed under the camera on the play mat. It then turns these cards into animating 3D creatures on your television set, which can then fight with other creatures and even be poked and prodded by your own hand. It's quite a cool feat, and I think I even dropped my jaw a little the first time I summoned something on screen.

The camera is incredibly quick at reading the cards, and I only had slight problems with card recognition. That's all easily solved by just spending a moment setting up the game to your room's lighting conditions. Make sure you test one of each of the colors of cards. I thought I had it calibrated right my first time only to have my first water creature (light blue background) never read by the camera. All cards have worked flawlessly ever since then.

I'll try to go over all the meat of the rules for the game. It's pretty straight forward, but there's enough to it that the manual doesn't cover it all. The in game video tutorial moves at a snail's pace, but it answered almost every question I had. The rest I figured out on my own from trial and error, which kind of sucks for me because I'm kind of a rules lawyer and like to read 60 page word docs on game rules and errata.

A starting hand is made up of 5 cards, a maximum of 1 creature can be summoned per turn, and the game is over when one player controls 5 of the 9 "fields" of the play mat. During your turn, before you summon, you can also re-orient or attack with creatures already on the field, or play spell cards. Every action takes mana, of which you receive 2 per turn. Creatures have a summon cost in mana as well as an action cost (the cost of turning and attacking in later rounds) in mana. Spell cards also cost mana, although this cost can certainly be zero.

Your summoned creatures have attack power and hit points listed on the cards, and some have an extra printed ability, such as "This creature always attacks the back of his opponent." It will also detail which fields it is able to attack and counter attack. Powerful cards can attack front, back, left, or right or even many of those directions at the same time. Others can only attack to the front and have a weakness from behind. Some cards, like archers, can even attack over or through a grid. Some creatures' attacks are also magical in nature, which can hit nearly any square and ignore defensive and dodge bonuses.

When a creature is summoned for the first time, he gets a free attack if there is an enemy creature within his attack zone. Any subsequent action taken after that turn would cost mana to either re-orient it or attack with it again. The animations can be toggled on and off in the options screen. They are a blast to look at the first few times, but with them turned off the game speeds up by 3-4x.

So, even though the rules are pretty simple, there appears to be a lot of room for strategy, which is what these games are really about anyway. There are a couple of things hampering this for me right now though, granted the game is still very young. First as expected, this is the base set and the number of cards and game mechanics are small. It took many editions before Magic really opened up with new keywords that changed the metagame. Right now it seems like small 1 cost creatures placed on matching elements (that give them +2 HPs) is the way to go, a rush deck of sorts. Mana is at a premium with only 2 given per round and 1 extra when one of your creatures is killed.

You get very little mana but there is a ton to spend it on. The only point to bringing out big creatures is to kill off something with your free attack and then just let them sit there taking up space and absorbing damage. The generally high cost to summon has an accompanying high cost for reuse. It's hard enough building up the 5 mana to summon the creature, but forget about spending three more next turn to re-orient him, much less 3 more to make him attack again. So, what do you do? Keep pumping out 1 cost creatures with an occasional 2 or 3 mixed in.

As far as game modes, you are pretty limited. You can play in 1-on-1 battles against the computer. Winning will unlock new decks for the computer to play you with, or you can assign him one of your own. There is no story or career progression, and because they are trying to get you to play with real cards interacting with the camera, you won't be unlocking and opening any virtual booster packs in the game. The meat of the game is meant to be played online. Hooking up with an opponent is a cinch and even works across all territories. To avoid cheating when drawing cards, you register your deck with the Eye and the game will shuffle and tell you which cards to draw. There's still some rumblings that photocopying cards is easy and works with the eye, so we'll have to see how that cheating scene plays out.

There's a leader board for rankings, and the top sections of the leader board have saved replays of past battles for the best players. This works a lot like Gotham TV or the Forza 2 leaderboards. I suspect that tournaments will also be scheduled and played online. I haven't found an easy and reliable way to find a friend to play with, no thanks to Sony's online infrastructure versus that of Microsoft's.

All in all, Eye of Judgment is a very solid effort. Those like me that are a sucker for a card game are getting one hell of a deal. If you're not into card games, it's a slightly more expensive way to get a PS3 Eye and some software to show it off with. The game itself is good, but not quite great in its current state. I'm anxious to see if it picks up and how it can handle success. I'd like to see this game grow, but I'm even more eager to see how other card games can be adopted to this card reading format.