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| Source: http://stats.mag.com/content/images/image003.jpg |
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC (SCEA)
Platform: Playstation 3
Release Date: January 26, 2010
Genre: Tactical First-Person Shooter
Pros:
-It is now compatible with the Playstation move
-Large scale fights of up to 256 Players (128 versus 128 player maps)
-Sense of belonging (Team orientated with class based roles players work into)
-RPG-like leveling system with a sense of progression (Robust Skill Tree)
-Developers constantly growing and improving the game (Frequent updates)
-Different styles of play rather than the straight-forward run and gun
-Reward players for logging on and playing every 24 hours
-Gameplay is incredibly gratifying by the end of the match
Cons:
-It's like a real battlefield where the most random gunfire, grenade, or vehicle will kill you
-Gameplay experience is heavily affected by the team the player is playing with/against
-Lots of BS moments that can't be explained or avoided
-Each DLC is $9.99 each (2 available at the moment)
-Controls and gameplay take a while to get used to (no instruction booklet and minimal tutorial)
Exactly a year has past since the launch of MAG (Massive Action Game) and its servers. To celebrate, the developers rewarded the faithful players of MAG by raising the bonus experience points gain by 256% in relevance of being the only first-person shooter to support 256 players in one battlefield at the moment. Throughout the year, the game has gone through many updates, game changing elements, improved its gameplay, and added two downloadable contents (DLCs) to the game. Is the game as fun as it was a year ago? Or has it changed?
Source: Youtube Channel Stutodude
Graphics
I'm going to have to admit that the first time I jumped into the game, I thought the graphics were kind of ugly. It's not that the art, models, and textures were horrendous, but rather that it was surprising to see mediocre graphics on a Playstation 3. The color palette is darker overall, the rendering of the characters, buildings and vehicles seemed to lack polish and animations didn't look very accurate according to their actions (when you get knifed, it doesn't look like someone getting shanked). But after playing the larger maps with 256 players, it made perfect sense why everything was the way it was. Polygon count is lowered, textures are compressed, and lighting effects are toned down all so that the game can run at an optimal speed and making sure all the hit-boxes are making contact according to the in-game graphics. I have a lot of respect for the developers for sacrificing a bit of the visuals to ensure that the gameplay still runs smoothly and efficiently. And in terms of the video and action from the game, the battles really do get hectic. The past two days, I made comments on both FPS (Breach and Modern Combat Domination) for having trailers that made the game seem like it was non-stop action that's fast-paced but both ended up being more slower-paced, tactical, and played carefully. Choosing to work with the Playstation 3 was a good idea since its technology can handle all the graphical rendering from flare effects, lighting, large terrains, and 256 individual players running around with their own animations. The user-interface for both the menu and in-game graphics is simple and easy to understand. Despite the graphics not having that nice polish in graphics, it works well with its gameplay capabilities and is appropriate to how it has to run. Graphics: 7.5/10
Audio
It was awkward to have the random rock music play in the beginning of each match/mission, but it grows on you after a while. The main menu theme song is rather iconic. Each time I start the game and hear that theme, I'm pumped up and ready to play. The music in-game does have a bit of impact in the atmosphere in the game whenever the player fulfills an important objective or starts getting a kill streak, but it's not something I'd hum to or remember. It's recognizable, but not memorable. Music aside, sound is an incredibly important factor in the game. I play as a field medic and thus require a lot of focus around my surroundings to know who I need to heal and where to avoid enemy gunfire (or in some cases, friendly fire). The characters will have dialogue according to actions that really help with that. Lines such as "Need a medic here!" or "Enemy sniper identified!" are the two I keep an ear out for most (as well as "Grenade!" but it's like that in every FPS game) which is essential because of all the extra noise of gunfire, explosions, misc. dialogue, and team mates who have microphones. There's also the dialogue from the main commander that narrates everything that's happening on the map. "Objective A is being captured" "Destroy the road barrier" "Fall back to objective C" All of these lines are really useful and are spoken very clearly. There might be different voices for each Private Military Corporation (PMC = Faction), but I wouldn't know since I've stuck with my PMC since the beginning. It's important that all these dialogue is clearly heard since there's so much noise going on in the game. For the sound recordings on the guns, they're not the best. A lot of the guns don't sound very accurate, or maybe I've been just spoiled by the amazing recording and audio programming from Medal of Honor (2010). It isn't a big problem after a while, and the gun sounds are decent enough where it discouraged me from playing anymore. To sum it up, the audio in the game is very standard with nothing being incredibly bad but not audibly astounding either. Audio: 7/10
Controls
I could not score a point at all when I first started playing (I'm exaggerating, but I felt like a noob playing). The buttons are switched around from the normal FPS standard controls well known in Call of Duty with triangle as crouch and prone, R2 to switch weapons, and L2 to switch equipment. The sensitivity and motion for aiming down sight also felt a little awkward the first time, but I eventually got the hang of it. Having the equipment separated from the weapons for switching was a nice design choice since a player is capable of carrying 2 weapons and 3 items. It would be troublesome to switch between 5 items in the middle of a fire fight. The rest of the controls are pretty straight-forward with running, knifing, shooting, aiming down sight, and holding a button to activate or disarm a charge. Although the game has elements of a tactical shooter, it's closer to an action game where everything is fast-paced and multiple events are happening at the same time. In one area, there can be player taking out snipers, arming a bomb, defending an area, a vehicle driving by, and multiple explosives around. Because of such chaos, elements such as leaning left and right and having active cover aren't implemented into the game and instead requires the player's quick decision making and reflexes to get the job done. I don't have a Playstation Move, so I can't say how well the controls on that work. I still have difficulties aiming correctly and certain actions such as jumping and strafing while running are a bit difficult in certain situations, but the controls hold up pretty well for the most part in the game and shouldn't be too cumbersome. Controls: 8/10
Gameplay
Does anyone else besides me feel cheated when a game isn't like the trailer that seems like it's full of action only to find out that it's not?
Source: Youtube Channel PlayStation
Does the game ever get as exciting as the video from above? Yes - it - does! Sometimes more so than the video when the player really gets into the middle of everything with vehicles, grenades, gunfire, and 10+ people shooting at each other. There hasn't been any other FPS that gives me the sense of a large scale war zone like MAG does. The game doesn't have any instruction manual or booklet and the tutorial teaches the most basic of controls and gameplay. Everything I learned about the game I learned from playing and dying a lot. This allowed me to pick up how to play the game much faster since I played alongside and against players who were level 60 when I was level 2-3 and saw how they played. The game is multiplayer exclusively and has four distinct game modes or "missions" players can be deployed into. The first is suppression, your standard team death match with 16 vs 16 players. Sabotage is a larger scale game type where one team defends and another team sets charges to an enemy resource building on a 32 vs 32 skirmish. Acquisition is where one team defends their vehicles from being stolen while the other team works together to penetrate the defenses and take two vehicles from the enemy base back to their respective checkpoint in a 64 vs 64 battle. Domination is the main attraction of the game and my favorite game type where one team defends 8 bases while the other team breaks in to capture it in a large map containing 256 players in a 128 vs 128 war. Along with the main objective, players can score points by helping the process of fulfilling the main objective by destroying enemy resources, getting kills, and healing allies.
Players earn experience points for any of the actions above and can be used to contribute to their skill tree which help boost abilities in wielding their weapon, their efficiency in using an item, or how resistant they become to explosions, gas, and bullet wounds. The game really emphasizes on how well the player can do if the rest of the team is with them moving together as a cohesive unit and how well they can play their role. When I first started, I was actually really annoyed with how bad players were at being field medics by not keeping the team alive and in the front lines. I decided to build towards a medic role and became very good at it. Sometimes, I get the most points in the squad just for the amount of team mates I resuscitated and healed. Just staying alive, keeping my team mates alive, and giving suppressing fire (or choosing shotgun/sniper to eliminate them entirely) to the enemy team won me and my PMC a lot of rounds (I have a poor k/d ratio, but an incredible win/lose ratio). This made me feel like I had a special position within my PMC that I felt very proud about.
The combat can either be very BS (you will die a lot unless you're a sniper that everyone ignores) but it can also be very exciting. Because the field is so large, it's hard to predict which side the player will be attacked from. So going into an area alone will probably get you killed before you even see anyone. But if you go in with a small team of your squad, it's possible to get 3, 5, even 10 kills in one area as long as your team mates watch your back and you watch their's. Sniping is really fun and can be rather cheap to most players. The shotgun can be variable. If an enemy is at point blank, you can get a instant kill with one shot. Automatics, in my opinion, are pretty difficult to handle but have the highest chance of getting kills and the weapon of choice for close-quarter defense. Most players concentrate on the killing and so I tend to focus more on healing and be a support.
I actually bought this game in the summer after I graduated; this is half a year after it released. But between the time I bought it and now, it had gone through dramatic changes that kept the game interesting. Besides obvious updates to optimize the latency and balancing the game out, the developers took a huge turn in changing the way players leveled up their skills. Before the update, the skill tree was one huge screen with one line pertaining to another and got players the full extent of a skill by a certain cost of skill points players receive by accumulating experience points on the battlefield. Now, players can gradually obtain their skills through a much more organized skill tree format by spending one skill point for a part of the skill rather than waiting to get 3-5 levels before obtaining a skill. Skills can be reallocated if the player gets enough "skill change experience points". The developers have stayed faithful to the players and constantly update the game and making it better. The only thing I have against the devs right now is the price tag of the DLCs, and it's obvious players of MAG aren't too happy with it either seeing how low the player count is in the deployment screen.
When the player first jumps onto MAG, they are asked to choose a Private Military Corporation to serve under. All that's given is a brief description of the three PMCs and their logo. Weapons will look different, maybe the voices are different, but the gameplay is about the same for all three sides. It's like in World of Warcraft where there's different races and looks for each side, but the game is virtually the same for both sides. Changing to another PMC is difficult to do (I still don't know how I do it yet, and I don't want to. My PMC rocks!) but is possible. It may not seems much to have a "side" to join with, but I started to have a sense of belonging and duty when I played enough because I was with players who chose to be in the same faction I was in. It's strange, but it adds to the experience of being part of a "larger" part of the story within the world of MAG.
As a whole, MAG delivers a wholesome multiplayer FPS experience that no other FPS can give. The menu system is simple and easy to navigate, the gameplay is challenging and different each time, there are tons of ways to play the game depending on play style and skill build, and the feeling that you get at the end of a victory is unexplainable. When I finish a huge match on MAG and I know I contributed a lot to the team, it's such a satisfying feeling to see the level bar go up and see all the number of experience points received from the achievement from the match. I almost forgot to mention about the "Happy Hour" system. For an hour every 24 that a player logs into MAG, they receive a 100% bonus experience points gain with their contributions to the team for every match they play within that hour. This makes it easy for me to log on, play for an hour and leave satisfied. Call of Duty: Black Ops and Medal of Honor are really fun FPS games, but I never have that same satisfaction I get from MAG and make me want to play more (which is probably what Activision and EA wants, haha). Gameplay: 8.5/10
Overall
If you are looking for a dynamic experience in a multiplayer first-person shooter, I highly recommend MAG. The community is still very strong and thousands of people still play despite big name titles occupying so many systems around the world. The game should be around $30-$40 and possibly for $20 in some places. Don't be discouraged by the initial play of the game where everything seems confusing at first, it does get better. The game is as fun as ever before and yes it has changed, but for the better. The developers continue to support the game and have frequent updates to it. Thanks for reading, all this talk about MAG is making me want to play it. Overall: 7.75/10
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