Quick Look: Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas

Nasty ramen.

I know this is the oddest thing to complain about but those board pieces are so intractable and do stuff.

If Vinny's confused by this I'd love to see him try and play the new Magic DotP :)

Thank you for diversifying content on GB from GBEast and trying things out :o)

I am going to try and play this content for free (with in-game currency) because it seems made for replayability to unlock different cards versus a handful of decks per week. I dont think i want to play the same opponents in such a condensed fashion so any real money i spent would be for delayed gratification.

It is why i go more for the (randomish) arena versus constructed play where people copy deck ideas.

Mahrna.

So how much like Yugioh and Pokemon is this game?

Great to see this getting some coverage. I blasted through most of it pretty quickly, only the final fight posed me any serious problems even with my no-legendary scrub decks. But it was good fun nonetheless, it would be nice if the AI was a tad smarter at times but the strong hero powers and extra life helps to balance that out. I think 700 gold is a pretty sensible price - you'll get that fairly quickly if you're popping on at least once every three days and doing your stored daily quests.

Plus you get a bunch of cards and I'm already making good use of the ones I've picked up in each set. I like the delay too between each wing, as the normally fairly slowly-adjusting constructed meta should get a slight shakeup with each new set that comes out (especially given some of the cards to come). I'm definitely looking forward to more. New cards are what Hearthstone has been needing for a while, honestly. The base game is still really fun for me but it is nice to see some new things that make you think a little differently.

Oh, and Alex? Don't worry (I'm sure you won't), you're doing fine. It's nice to see someone who knows their way around the game, even if you're not an especially advanced player. Would definitely be fun to see some showmatches some time between you and Patrick or Rorie - even if it's not high-level play the mid-game banter should no doubt provide for some entertaining moments.

I managed to beat Heroic Maexxna on my second attempt with a fairly basic Hunter deck.

If you can get a Snake trap off early, they cost 0 mana to put back in, so if they get webbed, it actually works in your favour with a Buzzard. You can just keep drawing cards until you get Hounds and just make sure you keep your side of the board full.

The entire point of the heroic Maexxna fight is to accentuate battlecries. The hero ability seems like a real pain at first glance, but what it really does is give you infinite cards that are only worth their battlecry. It's the reason why she starts with creatures on the board, since without them you would have an insane advantage.

@xbob42:

Its not like Hearthstone is some little indie card game. It's a huge, popular game developed by Blizzard. Hardly 'diversifying'.

Still, I enjoyed the QL. Nice one guys.

@alex: Most pc recording software has it automatically set to not record the cursor which is kinda silly. I know Fraps and Dxtory does at least.

Uhh... then card games aren't for you? Unless you just mean that you prefer booster drafts, Arena mode is just that.

I can't entirely disagree with you... but I'm hoping against hope that the first wing was especially easy, since it was the first/free one. I too beat all the normals/class challenges and the first 2 heroic bosses on the first attempt, which, while validating, was definitely disappointing considering how hype I was for the Naxx launch.

Hearthstone needs more and better options to spend money/gold which is one of my biggest problems with the game, despite playing it a bunch. Grinding gold takes forever (30 wins for a card pack without quests) and most of the time, the booster will have a bunch of cards you don't want or already have. If they had more ways to spend that money, such as more emotes, different card backs, unlockable custom card effects, etc, there would be room for better ways to also earn gold beyond the dumb quests.

An expansion like this seems like a bad solution because they're basically asking 20 bucks (or whatever it costs) to unlock 20 new cards or so (yes, the gameplay against the bosses is different, but once you're done, what you got out of it is the cards.) If you're like me and struggling to get a solid deck with the slow gold income, 700 gold to unlock a quarter is quite a lot as it basically means you forgo seven card packs which could potentially hold the card you've been looking for for the last half year. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a fair price, but choosing between seven chances for something like Alexstrasza and unlocking a couple of A.I. games is not easy.

I am so happy that Alex has gotten in to Hearthstone. Blizzard really nailed the balance between accessibility and depth. Also, it's one of the only free-to-play models that doesn't make me want to barf. Great game.

Alex won, because he Bolieved in the heart of the cards.

Hearthstone is my current favourite game. It's fun figuring out card builds.

It's time to send Blizzard to fantasy name jail for abuse of naming and title privileges.

Dennis?!

The only card game I've ever enjoyed playing in my life was Yu-Gi-Oh. Could never get into Magic or anything else like it. But this might be a fun little thing to try out since its mostly free.

Randomly stopped playing this game and forgot about it one day after playing it tons for weeks, now I might have to get addicted again, damnit.

RIGHT?! I have a friend who plays a Murloc-rush deck, and it would be SO HANDY if I could just make a deck for him specifically without deleting one of my others...

@paulunga: Maybe they meant that, like me, they don't like netdecking and I'd agree were that the case. I mean if I'm going to play someone else's deck with someone else's strategy...I don't see much of a point in playing.

I realize this will likely preclude me from advancing terribly far up the "ladder," but since I'm already casual, it doesn't bother me. Then again I could be wrong about their intent, cause yeah actual deck construction is a huge part of the fun for me.

The insane color banding on the background is a perfect example of why we need to hurry and get 10 bit H264 as a standard.

I just started playing this game yesterday and I'm pretty terrible. On my third real game I got matched with someone who had Gruul (7/7 +1/+1 per turn) while I was running with the stock deck. I still like it, even if I feel like I'm weaker for not giving Activision all my money.

This is probably as far from my interest as I can get, but it's a giantbomb video.

Edit: Not bad! At least I feel it have to look it up on the store.

I would love to hear that Vinny has fallen down the Hearthstone sink hole too. Then maybe they could have a fireside game with Rorie, Alex & Patrick sometime :D

Am I crazy, or is a game company putting out the single player portion of their video game for extra money and calling it an "expansion" super scummy?

@pudge: When the base game is free? Nah.

Are you talking about the Yu-Gi-Oh games that were on GBA? My buddy happened to find a copy of one of those on the sidewalk outside his house when we were younger. We both ended up getting pretty into the game for a bit. This has actually had me thinking about that game a lot. I've been telling myself I'd try this, but I've also been telling myself the same thing about the Magic game sitting on my 360 since it was free on Game for Gold a few months back.

@hatking: I did play the gameboy games, but I was specifically talking about the real card game.

@pudge: the game is free, so no

@branthog said:

Haha, yeah. We've reached the point where any game dev owned by a major publisher just focus tests that out.

For a while, Starcraft 2 actually did list both your wins and losses. But apparently Blizzard thinks that players are a bunch of babies, so they patched it out, and it only tells you how many wins you have that season, or with that race, etc. And yes, as you've noticed, same with Hearthstone.

Big budget games really do go out of their way to coddle players, as of late. Like, matches are the only place where you might actually feel dismayed that you've lost, because the devs sure have gone out of their way to make sure that there are no stats anywhere in the game to remind you that you've ever lost.