Magic Carpet™ 2: The Netherworlds

As much as I enjoyed Magic Carpet 1, I had great difficulties getting it to run at appropriate speeds, especially in high-res mode (press R in game). I'm happy to report MC2 has no such problems, and seems to be working flawlessly. These games are very unique, and a lot of fun to play. If you give them a chance and look past the graphics (I actually really like the way they look), you'll be hooked. MC2 even starts with a nice tutorial, making it more noob-friendly than the previous.

Magic Carpet, love it or hate it, is unlike anything that came before it - essentially it was a first person action-strategy game with a fully 3D world. MC2 is very similar, but changes things around a bit, probably in order to appeal to more players. Gone is the open-ended structure of the levels, now you have to follow precise mission objectives. This does give the game more focus, and adds more variety, but also results in a much easier game. Killing enemy wizards is especially easy now. The game in general is not nearly as hard as MC1, although you'll still die quite a bit, and overall it's not particularly long either, having only half the level count of the original. New monsters and new spells (now divided in tiers) have been added, but for the most part, the formers are annoying and the latters are useless. Technically it was improved however, especially the game speed not being dependant on the CPU speed anymore, so you won't need to tinker with Dosbox to make it run at the right speed. Night levels have been added, and they are quite the lookers. The same can't be said about underground levels which, while purposely dreary, also end up being pretty annoying to play through. But open levels are better structured than the ones in MC1, which sometimes looked as if they were created with a random generator. MC2 is probably a better introduction for new players. If you liked this game, you can then try Magic Carpet as well, because it will require some more thinking.

...why the basic idea of the game has not been picked up again in modern times. Collecting mana, building a castle, upgrading spells and all that "on the fly" fighting other players would make a perfect internet game for today. Or sort of a coop-mode where you try to clear levels with a friend or two. Hm. Back on the 486 the graphics were among the most amazing to be seen. A lot was already in 3D (landscape, could be shaped and twisted with spells), the effects were gorgeous (still remember the first time I saw those transparency effects) and what was really mind boggling was how the mana blobs sort of got together to form bigger blobs. Played this with a friend (think we had a direct cable connection of two computers over LPT ports but too long ago actually) and it was real fun.

Not say about Magic Carpet besides it is probably the best game ever made , by one of the greatest Studios ever ... Bullfrog ... Fuck EA , No more games like these can be found nowadays . A pure Diamond !! Also check out Bullfrog's other games , like Syndicate , Theme Hospital and so on