Setup:

This is the most unique and most perilous aspect of The Eye of Judgement. The 3x3 grid on which you play is a cloth mat that comes with the game. It needs to be ironed out, or the grid won't fit correctly beneath the eye - and therefore, on screen. The Playstation Eye itself is a tidy device that slides handily into the stand, but the relatively short USB cord (a portion of which needs to snap into the stand) doesn't provide nearly enough room to accommodate more than a handful of seating and table situations.

Complicating the matter further is the placement of the camera, which needs to be on one side, preferably opposite your dominant hand so you don't cast a shadow over the cards when you move.

But the most frustrating aspect of setting up The Eye of Judgment has got to be the game's uber-finicky lighting preferences. Keep your room too dark and the eye can't scan the cards. Too bright and the reflections from the cards interfere with the eye as well. I ended up having to drag over a floorlamp and hold it at the right angle with my big ol' foot just to get the game rolling, which is hardly endearing.

That said, if you can make it through the setup and happen to have furniture that's friendly to The Eye of Judgment's physical limitations, you're golden. It's this aspect alone that I suspect will keep The Eye of Judgment from being a hit with the non-TCG crowd: you've got to want to play badly enough to make it that far.

Gameplay:

At its core, The Eye of Judgment is fairly simple: with a starter deck of 30 cards, players summon creatures and cast spells while taking turns battling over a 3x3 grid of elementally attuned squares. To win, one player must end his or her turn while controlling five squares. This means that games can go fast, depending on the time limit and rules you set, but also that you can hunker down and develop your own strategy thanks to the games simple-to-learn, difficult-to-master design.

Each of the game's 9 grids belongs to one of five elements - fire, water, earth, wood and the neutral element, Biolith. (Biolith sounds interesting, and is an integral part of the backstory of The Eye of Judgment - unfortunately, that story goes almost entirely untold.) Each card also bears an element - and as you might expect, placing a card on a tile of the same element increases its power, while doing the opposite will reduce the effectiveness of your move.

The game strictly controls the cards in your hand - if you buy booster packs and build your own deck the way you're encouraged to do, you'll need to use the game software to build your deck, registering each card beneath the eye. Most cards cannot have more than three copies per deck, although some powerful cards can only appear once in each deck. No matter how you build your deck, the technical problems of the Eye itself can make deck-building (and gameplay in general) extremely frustrating.

Also frustrating is the game's reliance on the cards themselves - there are a handful of action cards that stand aside from gameplay and must be waved before the eye in order to effect a discard, a context-specific action or the like. Some cards require further steps, such as picking a unit to sacrifice, which invariably involves using an action card, sometimes in conjunction with yet another card, and unless your setup is right on the money, this can be a game-breaking moment.

The game lets you play against a real, physical friend who's brought over his or her deck, but it also lets you battle online and battle the computer as well, which is good for practice. There's a computer versus computer mode that doesn't make much sense, as well as a quick-and-dirty "Judgment" minigame that involves putting down two cards and seeing which one wins. It's not so much a minigame as an excuse to put a card in your hand and roll it around, watching the animation on the screen twist and turn with your hand. Fun, but not really a game.

One thing major that's missing from The Eye of Judgment is story - when I spoke with producer Yusuke Watanabe at TGS, he painted a detailed picture of the history of the world of The Eye of Judgment that explained, among other things, why the neutral element is called Biolith. It was really quite cool, which leaves me confused as to why the story has virtually no presence in the game. Just a few custom-designed battles tacked on to a simple narrative would have done wonders - if Puzzle Quest can tell a story with Bejeweled, then The Eye of Judgment certainly could have pulled it off.

Helpfulness:

A strange aspect of a game to discuss, I know, but The Eye of Judgment needs some explaining, and how it educates new players is important. While the well-done videos that come with the game do a terrific job of explaining the basics, they feel like industrial work. Like that video they make you watch when it's your turn for jury duty.

The videos would have been better served by additional in-game tutorials. As it stands, you're tossed into battle without much to go on, and it wouldn't have taken too much effort to include a few baby-step levels to help ease up the learning curve. It would also have made a seamless introduction to any kind of story mode or campaign.

Graphics & Sound:

The graphics here are amazing, as they damn well ought to be. Even if it takes a few tries, getting a card to summon properly is a rewarding experience in and of itself - let alone the steampunk-fantasy visual blitz that happens when two cards battle it out - you'll see your units move, attack, and counter-attack as fully-realized entities with no hint of their two-dimensional origins. It's awesome, it's worth the headache, and it proves that the risk Sony took making The Eye of Judgment was worth it. No other game has brought so much imagination to the table while working so far outside the comfort zone of game design.

The sound, unfortunately, is kind of busted. The game's turns are narrated by this heavy metal voice that's way too intense for a handful of instructions that will be heard over and over again. Likewise, the thrash-metal soundtrack provides plenty of psych-yourself-up mojo, but quickly becomes grating and annoying. I turned the sound down until it was barely audible - and then had a wonderful time.

Nutshell:

In a season so loaded with amazing and anticipated games, it's hard to give The Eye of Judgment an unrestricted recommendation. Under certain conditions, this is an amazing game. If you're a certain type of gamer, you'll likely enjoy yourself tremendously. Even the technically frustrating aspects of the game were kind of fun from a "wacky game" factor, especially since the genuinely fun gameplay makes for good motivation to pull out that old card table and put it right in front of your television.

But if you're specifically not a fan of trading card games - even if you're looking to become one - I can't really say that The Eye of Judgment is for you. It's still worth a shot if you've got the spare change, since the card play is a great time and playing The Eye of Judgment means you've got that Playstation Eye ready to star in your own videos when SingStar hits the PS3.

But if you are a TCG fan, The Eye of Judgment is an absolute must-buy. For a niche-market game, there's a lot of appeal here, and the amount of imagination and outside-the-box-ness that went into the making of The Eye of Judgment alone will be worth the price of admission to many.