Culdcept - PS2

Putting Culdcept in front of me is like putting crack in front of a crackhead. It's hard to explain the simplicity or the addiction of the game to people that haven't invested some time into it, but I'll try my best to here. It's a game that' s like Magic the Gathering crossed with Monopoly. That's about it! You (Ceptors) have a deck of cards and you try to conquer the board by placing Creatures on the board. Upon passing them you can improve their land levels, and when an opponent lands on them, they have to pay (in the form of Mana). The Ceptor that reaches the Mana goal first gets the win. Not difficult right? Well throw in items, spells, and elements and you actually have a really intriguing game. 

I started playing it maybe three years back and I couldn't stop playing it for like three months straight. I carefully prepared my deck of 50 cards: a deck for water and wind Creatures, a deck for fire and forest creatures, a deck for non-elementals, and an all-out offence deck. I beat the game sixty or seventy hours into it, but then I discovered the Medals and I tried my best to get those too. Medals are awarded for performing special tasks on the board that are milestone-like. It took specific cards or combination of cards to complete the Medal tasks. You just can't forget the art involved in the game, and the recurring sound effects. Just hearing "Giant Bat vs. Giant Rat" makes me laugh. Everything is epic. Every card has a weakness, a strength, and a function: thats what makes the game so good, the odds of losing are always there, so the wins really give you a sense of accomplishment. But most of all, I got my brother into it, and he had made a character also. We'd duke it out and team up together, some of the greatest hours spent in videogaming. 

And now there's the new Culdcept DS (Japan Import) due to be out. Can't wait to see how the new cards are.