Marvel Trading Card Game is an average game to play, graphically. It's nothing amazing though. There's no moving graphics or no attack scenes that you might expect to see when two cards battle each other. Honestly, there's nothing that's just going to make you shout about how beautiful it is, but the cards themselves are very well detailed. They're beautifully drawn, each looking very much like their Marvel counterparts. Considering how many cards there are in the game, that's a lot of artwork! I did find it nice that the game is played with the DS turned sideways, so it allows you to see more of the screen easier.

As for the sounds, well I didn't really notice them very often. To tell you the truth, I just turned it down and listened to something else. The background music sounds similar to the X-Men intro sound. The sounds in Marvel Trading really don't affect the gameplay. There's no sound that tells you when you to move on to the next step, or even when you're being attacked.

So this is where Marvel Trading Card Game gets complicated. Starting the game is easy. When you first load it, you'll see that you have three game save slots. Choose one of the "New Game" slots. Professor X will then show you a few screens that tell you about the story of the game, after which he asks if you would like to play the Tutorial. I would highly recommend going through the tutorial just so you're not completely lost.

After you go through the Tutorial, you're given the option to choose Hero or Villian. Now you would think that these would be opposite games, as you obviously wouldn't have the same path to take as a villain that you do as a hero. Well that's true in a way. Both paths have the same chapters to go through, the same or very similar opponents, but they have different Card Packs to unlock.

As you beat missions and solve the challenges, you unlock Card Packs that you can buy. For each level you beat and each challenge you solve, you get points that you can spend to unlock Play Mats and Card Packs. Play Mats simply change your background. Card Packs give you more cards to add to your deck. The cards in Marvel Trading are the one really great thing about it. You get to see many, many cards of your favorite Marvel heroes, such as Spiderman, Iron Man, and She-Hulk, and your favorite villains including Dr. Doom, Green Goblin, and Mystique. Both heroes and villains have team affiliations, allowing them to work with their team members for a team attack, which is much stronger than a normal attack.

You also have the option of playing Marvel Trading as a multiplayer game. You can play it wirelessly with a local player or you can play against someone online.

Marvel Trading Card Game is a very difficult game, at least to learn how to play. The Tutorial does an excellent job of teaching you the concepts of the game. How you play it though, now that's another matter. I went through the Tutorial at least three times, then decided that I wasn't going to get anything else out of it. I then spent several days just playing the first level clicking on everything I could at every stage just to figure out what to do and when to do it. After you get the hang of it though, Marvel Trading is actually very easy to play.

The game mechanics in Marvel Trading Card Game are really what make it a difficult game to learn to play. The real trick is to learn what to click and when. Almost all of Marvel Trading is played using the stylus. The only other thing you use is the D-pad, to scroll up and down on text that is too long to fit on the screen, and you can use the (START) button to skip to the next lesson in the Tutorial. Now I'm not going to go through what step you click on where and when, because that's the purpose of a FAQ, not a review. But I will mention that one of the biggest things I didn't get out of the Tutorial is that during the recovery step, you click on an exhausted card and then you can click on the action arrow to recover it, meaning it doesn't get KO'd off of your board.

If you're a fan of Marvel comics or a fan of trading card games, I would definitely recommend Marvel Trading to you. Otherwise, you might want to pass on this game because you'll most likely get bored and frustrated before you even figure out how to play!