As games are a favorite hobby of mine, I’m always on the lookout for new and different games. From role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons to online MMORPG to puzzle games and thinking games like Chess. Card games are something I enjoy playing too and I’ve even coded a few card games in my time. Something I hadn’t tried playing before is a card game played on a mat with a webcam that acts out the results of different player/computer moves.

Until buying and playing the PS3 Eye of Judgment.

Quick thoughts? intriguing use of a camera. To date, eye camera type games have seemed more like gimmicks than fun games but Judgment is somewhat unique and I can see why people were having fun playing it at PAX (Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle recently). Here’s one where a game camera is used as an active participant in a card game that can’t be played without the PS3 (maybe it can, but it’s not meant to be played that way). I was able to beat the computer solo on the Beginner and Amateur settings but have not yet been victorious on Normal mode. Haven’t tried playing against others online yet. Not quite ready to take my skills to the masses. Soon.

The Eye of Judgment bundle comes packaged in finger slicing bubble wrap — be careful cutting the outside with a razor blade — and then you can pull the contents out which look like the picture shown at the top of this post. The package contains the following:

- starter deck of 30 cards
- booster pack containing 8 additional cards
- PSEye USB camera
- PSEye tower (assembly required)
- PS3 Eye of Judgment game
- player mat

PSEye video
While you are setting up PSEye camera tower, yes, some assembly is required, you might want to download from the Playstation store the free video camera software called EyeCreate.

You can use EyeCreate to make videos on your PS3. I’ll cover this functionality in a separate post.

Setting up the PSEye tower
As mentioned above, you do need to assemble the PSEye tower, but no tools are required. The instructions are inside the Eye of Judgment instruction manual, but you can probably assemble without them. Here are step-by-step instructions with pictures.

STEP 1. Open the box and bag inside containing the four plastic pylons.

STEP 2. Attach two of the pylons into each side of the base.

STEP 3. Attach the center black base support to the top of the two pylons. Note the notch in the back for the wires. It should be on the opposite side of the writing on the bottom base.

STEP 4. Attach the two other pylons to the center black base support.

STEP 5. Attach the camera black top support so it’s facing up at an angle.

STEP 6. Now slide the PSEye camera into the support so it’s facing down. It should slide easily into place.

STEP 7. Gently pust the wire from the back of the PSEye camera into the notches in the center of the plastic base. I found that not inserting in the bottom base made it more stable, but your mileage may vary.

STEP 8. Lay out the mat on a flat surface and place the PSEye base in middle of the edge. There are spots along the edge to line up the PSEye base. I put the PS3 Eye of Judgment game box in the center of the playing mat to show scale in the next picture.

Note the picture above shows placing the PSEye tower base on a bed, which isn’t advised because you will need to setup the camera settings new each time you play the game if it’s not in the same spot. If you don’t mind spending a couple minutes setting up the camera placement each time you want to play, it does work when placed on a soft surface like a bed, but a desk or table is better. That’s where we moved it to after the first night of playing.

STEP 9. You’re ready to turn on the game and do the initial camera setup. There is a (too) long cinematic introduction that you can bypass by clicking the start (>) button.

STEP 10. The first time you load Eye of Judgment you’ll automatically be taken step-by-step through the camear configuration, but after that if you move the camera as we did then you can reach it from the ‘Options’ in the main menu. During this phase you need to choose where of the four spots you placed the camera. The configuration wizard is easy to follow and shows pictures of each setup.

Once you’re done setting up the camera you need to place a card on the playing mat. If the PSEye camera recognizes the card, a white image will appear over the card. This part confused me a bit, I expected it to show something a little more obvious, so hopefully that helps others.

There are different lighting settings you can use depending on the brightness of the room. We used the ‘automatic’ setting with overhead lighting and it seemed to be fine.

Woohoo, now we can play!

Time to play solo match against computer
I’d recommend playing against the computer to get the hang of the game. So far that’s all we’ve done, taking turns since Eye of Judgment only comes with one starter deck and 8 booster cards. Additional decks aren’t available in any stores yet — at least in our area — and Amazon shows 1-2 months before any new decks will ship. Come on, Sony, why aren’t you selling additional starter decks so people can play against other people locally? I realize you can play it online against other players.

As for how to play the game, there is an option in the main menu to view some videos of how to play the game. The videos do a decent job explaining the basics of the game and taking you through a hypothetical game.

How to play Eye of Judgment
Here’s my brief and hopefully easy to understand explanation of how to play. Strategy is a whole different matter. We can cover strategy in the comments section.

Shuffle the starter deck of 30 cards. Start by drawing five cards. You can look over your cards and if they aren’t good replace them with five additional cards which is called a mulligan. Press the start (>) button when you are ready to start the game against the computer. The object of the game is to be the first player to have creatures occupy five of the nine spots on the player mat. You can only place one creature card on the map — this is called “summoning” — each turn and your opponent can attack and kill your creatures to thwart your progress, so a game could last 7, 10, 15 or more turns, although an average game seems to last around 10 minutes or less.

There are a few events that can prevent you from being able to lay down a creature card (summon a creature, remember) every turn:

1. You don’t have any creature cards. Each turn you start by drawing a new card with the exception being if you start the game out on the first turn first (a slight advantage). You can have the computer randomly assign who starts first to even out the advantage. The second number beneath your mana on the game screen shows the number of cards you should have in your hand at any given time. Also the computer will remind you to draw a new card at the start of each turn.
2. Not enough Mana to summon the creature. This is more common than #1. If you only have high mana creature cards in your hand, your only move might be to wait until next turn. Each turn you get +2 mana points and if any of your creatures are killed you will gain back some mana, but I found several times I didn’t have enough mana to place a creature on the map. Kind of frustrating, but common.
3. A summoning lock. Some of the more powerful creatures can only be placed if summoning is unlocked. You can tell by the big padlock at the top of the screen. If that’s on, even if you have enough mana, you can’t summon these creatures.
4. You run out of time. Although this one is a bit more unlikely, a timer can be set on the length of each player’s turn to choose what cards to play (default: 5 minutes). I found myself up against the five minute timer in my first game.

Spell cards
You can perform spells with some cards and will want to play these before summoning a creature. Important: the direction you place the creature card on the board determines how they interact with other creature cards on the player mat. Before setting down any card pay attention to which way the creature attacks, which is shown at the bottom of each card. It’s recommended to study what each card looks like and what it does. This will help. The Eye of Judgment instruction manual does a good job of showing what each attritube on the card means.

Tip: Creatures can gain or lose points by being placed in the wrong environment (known as element fields). Of the nine spots on the player map they are randomly placed by the computer earth (2), wood (2), water (2), fire (2) and Biolith (1). If you place a creature on the map in the opposite element — say water instead of fire — they will suffer a penalty and can be killed easier.

Hopefully these instructions reduce the number of times you see this:

Unstick the discard
Sekerah in the Playstation forums has the answer to a problem with the PSEye acknowledging your discards:

You need to “offer” it to the eye, meaning you hold above the mat in your hand.

Any good Eye of Judgment strategy tips to share?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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