When we first spied The Eye of Judgment at Sony's E3 2006 press conference, we thought the company had gone insane. With so much pressure to deliver the PlayStation 3 to the masses, a card battle game that used some funky EyeToy camera seemed, to put it bluntly, stupid. Fast forward to last week, and there we were, on a Friday night no less, drinking and playing this addictive game for several hours.

The Eye of Judgment, much like Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon, is a card battle game in which you square off against an opponent by playing cards containing various monsters and magic spells. Elements play a big role; a fire-based creature will do significant damage to a plant-based one, and so on and so forth. Each card has a number associated with it, and this relates to the amount of mana required to use it. You gain two mana with each turn, and you build it up by playing weaker cards and then dropping some gargantuan beast onto the playfield, thus causing your opponent to crap his or her pants. These range from dragons to titanic robots, each packing powerful attacks that decimate lesser enemies.

On its own, The Eye of Judgment is a solid card game, but you don't play it only using the included two decks of cards and cloth mat. After setting up the mat, you plug in the camera (called the PlayStation Eye) into one of the PS3's USB ports and adjust it so that you can see the board on your TV. From there, you physically place cards on the mat and the Eye scans them within seconds. Upon reading them, monsters pop up on your television and remain there until defeated. The technology works surprisingly well. In fact, the few times it didn't work, all we needed to do was adjust a setting to get it up and running. Furthermore, because the camera effortlessly snaps into its included stand, setup is easy and painless.

Despite our reservations, the game is a lot of fun. There are a lot of rules to memorize, but an in-depth video tutorial will teach you everything you need to know. Battles can end quickly after a couple of screw ups, but you'll have the most fun going up against someone of equal skill, where skirmishes can take upwards of an hour. Playing in person rocks, especially with some drinks at hand, but you can also play solo against the computer or online against someone from across the globe, and The Eye of Judgment supports video and audio communication, making the experience more personal.

Although the game comes with two packs of cards, you'll continuously see the same ones pop up, which can make the game somewhat boring. Sony will seek to solve this issue, thankfully, by releasing more decks to purchase separately, and we certainly hope it continues to do so, since The Eye of Judgment has unlimited potential.

If anything, Sony deserves a slap for not crafting a story. The game has this dramatic opening scene with two dudes playing cards and a battle unfolding in some other location, but we have no idea what's going on or what purpose it serves.

That issue, however, is minor when you factor in the enjoyment that comes from not only playing The Eye of Judgment, but also watching the camera read the cards and seeing the creatures appear on the TV. Critics may argue that the game lacks the complexity found in long-standing card battle games, but Sony still produced a winning formula that makes its PS3 a bit more attractive, and to that we say, bravo.