Oh, you're still here? Should I evaluate then?

A lot of the fun that Magicka 2 brought was already established in the first game and that formula still works. The unique element mixing mechanic and the resulting array of spells is fun to watch, experiment with and sometimes yields unexpected and hilarious results (often leading to the death of a teammate - in my case Abe's). That's still present in Magicka 2. That and the ridiculous humor found everywhere in this game's world, that caused us to laugh out loudly from time to time. I'm not that picky when it comes to graphics so the overall look and feel seemed solid to me! Audio, too!

Here's a few specific things I really liked:

• When you die you can trigger a short voice sound to tell you're teammates to revive you. And those are just hilarious (You even can use one, that imitates Arnold Schwarzenegger).
• You can hold the casting button instead of spamming spells when healing yourself.
• The bossfight in the end and the new super Magick that lead up to it was pretty cool!
• Complicated spells can now be assigned to the number keys 1-4.

Unfortunately here's where the fun ends. A few changes to the controls and the spell effects where made, which we haven't managed to learn before the game was over. Also we died a lot! But those weren't the funny "oopsydaisy" deaths everyone laughs about, nuh-uh! Sometimes the ridiculously strong enemies just onehitted us for some reason. Other times we died because we where busy fleeing from a horde of enemies and pressed the wrong spell buttons. But worst of all we died pretty often without even knowing why.

To sum it up, my playing experience mostly consisted of running away from enemy hordes while reviving Abe or being revived by him while failing at or don't having the time to cast spells that might've saved us. That frustrated us pretty fast.

Here are a few specific things you can add on top of that:

• The story mode was very short.
• Frozen enemies now reflect beam spells like shields.
• They removed the empty push spell, which in the first game was dead useful to get enemies off your back.
• I think earth spells became pretty useless, because the rocks almost cover no distance when cast under stress.
• We couldn't find the spell Nullify, which often would've been dead useful.
• The default controls where changed enough that I changed them back to what I was used to from the first game.

So, there you have it. Magicka 2 was fun enough for us to laugh here and there and finish the story mode, but frustration was the more dominant feeling here. The first game was better!