Regardless of whether you've heard of MAG or not, I can probably make it sound appealing in a single phrase. 256 player online. Sound like fun? Well, I must say that in truth, it is. It simply annoys me... Rather a lot.
Who anybody who isn't aware, MAG, or Massive Action Game is the most recent title created by Zipper Interactive, the team behind the SOCOM series, so they are pretty well established within the world of first person shooters. Also like SOCOM this is another one of their titles that is Playstation 3 exclusive. Sorry Xbox owners.
Being completely online, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that Zipper have created an interesting and individual back-story. The story is set around the year 2025, where the world has fallen into another war, but unlike a typical war scenario with two sites, the MAG story is based around three different industrialised armies which are formed of groups of countries. The first is Raven who are composed of most of the Western European countries along with a majority of South America. Secondly is SVER, who are formed of China, India and Russia. Then finally there is Valor, who are made of the UK, US, Canada and Mexico. This creates three separate campaigns, one respectively for each army. The army the player chooses doesn't effect the gameplay style, but will effect other aspects, such as the weapons that are available to use, and also the soundtrack, which is quite a cool feature with the game having three separate soundtracks.
Beyond all that there is the gameplay itself. It does really run like a regular FPS, but I don't think it has the same feel it it when playing. I personally would compare the style as being a cross between Modern Warfare 2 and Warhawk.
The leveling system is a good feature as well, with the level cap being 60. When a player starts a campaign there will initially be little available to them, but after progressing they unlock various guns, attachments and other equipment. There is also only one game mode available at the start, each mode unlocked will allow for bigger matches, with the largest being Domination, which allows an amazing 256 players to come together in a single match.
After that the campaign for the chosen army is technical finished, but it the player chooses to do so they can select veteran mode, which works in a similar manner to the prestige mode in Call of Duty, although after become a veteran the player will receive a constant 10% XP bonus, which allows the game to have some form of replay ability, even after completing the three campaigns.
What is probably the most unique thing about MAG is it's server structure. Firstly to allow for such large teams, players are divided into smaller groups. When playing players are firstly put into squads, which are composed of eight players. Beyond that four squads form a platoon and four platoons form a company.
Another aspect that allows the game to be so large, is the way that players respwan. Instead of simply being able to instantly respawn after dying, the servers set out dedicated spawn times, which are every 20 seconds. This doesn't actually sounds too bad, having just a short few seconds to wait before spawning and getting back into the action. For me though, this is where I think a lot of my annoyance lies.
I'm by no means, the best player in the world for FPS games and I don't believe that I'm the worst either, although it seems to lean more towards being the worst. Maybe I just wasn't dedicated enough or am just a bad player, but to put it into perspective, it took me 29 hours to reach my first prestige on Modern Warfare. I unfortunately can't say what my prestige times were for the other Call of Duty games, as I never reached beyond level 20 on World of War, am currently level 55 on Modern Warfare 2 after 27 hours of gameplay and I don't own Black Ops. For me even though I do like the level systems used in such games I often find them incredibly long-winded and slow. With Modern Warfare being the first game to really implement such I system I think I have really used it a borderline to compare others against, so MAG felt comparatively slow.
Linking that back to the way the spawingis carried out, this means that I would often die in a match. And considerably mores so than mosrt others, as a result that would mean I would find myself spending a lot of time waiting to spawn. Eventually I would wait to spawn for longer than I would actually be on the battlefield and playing the game.
Beyond that I also become irritated when waiting to get into a match, with the servers waiting for a full lobby before launching the match. With larger game types this can be somewhat slow. Having said that though, the games uses a queueing system whereby players can openly go though the games menus without having to wait in a set lobby menu and allows for all other options and extra to still be accessed while waiting.
You may be thinking that I have actually been rather harsh in my reasons for getting annoyed and as a result I now no longer play MAG and have since gotten rid of it. But I still do appreciate the game that Zipper have created and think that for anyone who is a big, and I do mean big fan of FPS titles, then MAG is a game that you probably want to consider getting. The game has great depth to it, in both gameplay and the story surrounding it, as well as a great scale, currently being the largest game of it's type avalible on a console, although there may well be bigger things out for PC.
So, I hope this has given you a short insight into MAG, or at least an insight as to why it annoys me. As always, I've been randomthings, thanks you very much for reading this and I hope to be posting again soon.
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