Infinity Wars: Reborn (PC) Review

Infinity Wars: Reborn attempts to go where a lot of games have gone before: into the realm of trading card games and tries to delineate itself from the horde. In this capacity, it succeeds by one single virtue alone: each and every card is animated. The game itself is simple to understand, packed with a lot of depth based on some customisation options, and for the truly hardcore, it has card packs that can be bought with real money. This aspect might be off-putting given its free price, but the title can still be enjoyed without spending anything.

The goal is to either do 100 damage or kill enough cards that depletes a "morale" gauge. Gameplay takes place on a field, where each of the two players has an offense zone, a defence zone, and a waiting zone. On a turn, each player gains one extra command point, which can be used to put down cards into the waiting zone before assigning them to attack or defend. This command point counter increases each time, so turn one is 1 point, turn two is 2 points, and so on, which allows bigger cards to come down as it goes on.

Cards in your offense zone will attack the enemy's defence zone and vice versa. If they kill everything, then the damage spills into damaging the enemy. What this means is it often becomes a battle between putting one of your cards into the defence zone to block damage, compared to putting one on the attack. These moments are the heart of Infinity Wars: Reborn.

Cards are pretty simple, as they have two stats: attack and hit points. Say there is a creature that is 10/10, this means it is going to be doing 10 damage to everything it fights and take 10 total damage before it dies. There is a lot of strategy to placing cards when dealing with a creature like this. In this case, if the player had three cards that were 4/4, it would take all of them to beat it. The first would die, but do 4 damage, making the enemy card a 10/6, the next card would die, taking it down to 10/2, and your final card would kill it, but also die in the process. Needless to say, better cards can punch well above their weight. This adds an interesting dynamic of constantly re-evaluating whether to pull cards back to the waiting zone or swapping between zones.

The most notable aspect about Infinity Wars: Reborn is the different factions, and the animations of the cards. Making an appearance is everything from zombies, demons, angels, machines, animals and, perhaps the coolest, techno-knights. The campaign starts off with the knights, before opening up to all the others after they run a quick tutorial. The animations are really cool; they may only be a few seconds long, but it really adds to the atmosphere, especially when you see a Renaissance-era knight swinging a sword before pulling out an automatic pistol. It gives a good feeling to the faction, as the beasts will be shown slashing and jumping, whereas the robot cards often spark and flash.