But fire and earth to make fireballs? That's magic, and it's just the first step. Sure, that's cooking rather than magic, really. An entire gaming arsenal unlocked from the start - every trick in the book available as long as you have the imagination to work them out.
It's been a blessing because few games provide this kind of immediate thrill: magic broken down into eight elements that can be combined into complex, devastating spells at a moment's notice. Inevitably, Magicka's innate brilliance has been both a blessing and a curse. It should require a perfect balance of dexterity and imagination and an understanding of the strange, unshakable laws that underpin the whole thing.
It should shudder beneath your feet and leave you drained. Magicka grasped that real magic should be creative, rigorous, elemental, and only barely controlled.
Few games have understood magic - the wizardly, fantasy, fetch-me-some-sparrow-entrails kind of magic - quite as perfectly as Magicka did.
