Review: Cardpocalypse (PlayStation 4)

Cardpocalypse

Cardpocalypse is a single-player card game where you change the cards and the rules as you play, delivered within a charming school-based narrative.

Pros:

  • Cartoon style graphics.
  • 1.4gb download size.
  • Card battler gameplay.
  • Opening and ongoing tutorials.
  • 90s cartoon style music and presentation.
  • Platinum trophy.
  • Gameplay-card battler where you have the main hero card, you use dog food to play cards like defenders or attackers and the winner gets the other to zero health.
  • The story about starting in a new school in a new town as a craze is happening.
  • Deck builder.
  • Multiple choice interactions.
  • A fun selection of characters.
  • In between battles you can freely go around the world and interact with things and people.
  • Earn new cards fr quests.
  • It doesn’t really matter if you win or lose.
  • Humor throughout.
  • The game is quick to learn.

Cardpocalypse

Cons:

  • Slow burner.
  • Deckbuilding feels basic and has no real guidance.
  • No online mode.
  • Weird things like talking to someone, you have to face them so if you trigger it from behind you must wait as you go around to the front.
  • Weird pacing issues.
  • Card battling is fine but feels unbalanced.

Cardpocalypse

  • 8/10
    Graphics - 8/10
  • 7/10
    Sound - 7/10
  • 8/10
    Accessibility - 8/10
  • 7/10
    Length - 7/10
  • 8/10
    Fun Factor - 8/10
7.6/10

Summary

Cardpocalypse is going for a card battler at its heart but also adds in adventure style interactions and a story. Adding any sort of narrative to a card battler is never easy and again here it shows off how much it can mess up the pacing of the game. Collecting cards is that much longer and drawn out that it needs to be, that’s not to say the story is bad as it really isn’t but the way it all entwines is fine for the first few hours but it really doesn’t do any favors on keeping you entertained. The card game itself is rather easy to pick up and learn and it takes a lot of inspiration from Hearthstone especially in how it fundamentally works bit they add in a few twists like Mega, this is closer to a Pokemon thing whereby a certain condition triggers your main hero card to transform or evolve into a different hero card. I liked playing it for a handful of hours but after not playing for a while I had no real desire to go back.

Jim Smale

Gaming since the Atari 2600, I enjoy the weirdness in games counting Densha De Go and RC De Go as my favourite titles of all time. I prefer gaming of old where buying games from a shop was a thing, Being social in person was a thing. Join me as I attempt to adapt to this new digital age!