Review: MAG (PS3)

From the offset, MAG was billed as a very ambitious project. The possibility of 256 players on the one battlefield, giving their all for the cause made players salivate with anticipation, as something of this scale, especially on a console, was a thing of folklore. The last time a first person shooter tried numbers larger than normal was Delta Force: Black Hawk Down on the PS2 and Xbox; and while it did have a small degree of success, the technology didn’t do it any favours by having characters resembling Nintendo Game and Watch screens jerking along from one side of the map to the other.

Now, Sony have always been well known for having some of the smoothest and most robust servers out there, as many of the first party FPS titles have proven over the past few years, so how does Zipper Interactive fair with their first attempt at something outside of the SOCOM universe?

When you consider how solid most of their previous titles have been, you would be hoping for something pretty special, what with their knowledge of bringing games tinged with a modern warfare theme. The main difference for them is the perspective away from seeing your player from the third person. Another significant change is a movement away from the more strategy based styling and heading for something resembling Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, with classes and layout abilities lending themselves towards the DICE series.

Before you begin to kill anything though, you must pick your team to side up with. Whoever you DO decide to fight for, you’ll find yourself as part of a team of mercenaries who fight mainly for the money, but that’s about as much of a story thread as you’re going to get here. To be honest though, for a game that’s designed to play online battles, you don’t actually need a background. Just grab a gun, point it at the enemy and win is more or less all you need to know. There are 3 groups to choose from, and while each has a slightly different reason for doing what they do, the hardware you start with is more or less the same. Valor, SVER and Raven are those said armies and from what I can see, once you’ve picked your allegiance, you are pretty much stuck with it until you delete your character, which to me seems a bit strange.

For a change the tutorial is actually a very good thing to look at. With most other FPS titles you’ll be used to your look up, look down, jump a few times, crouch, shoot and finish, but there’s plenty more to learn with MAG. First aid guns, repair kits, arming of strategic placements and primary targets and vehicle driving also need to be packed into your brain before you get let loose, although it does show one small problem. The vehicle control is a bit iffy, with sensitive driving and no real feeling of stability, but we’re not spending most of our time behind the wheel anyway.

There are a total of 12 maps, although you can only access 10 due to the Suppression game mode restricting things to one arena for each faction. As you progress through your now customary levelling up and XP earning you start to get access to the other types of battle; Sabotage, Domination and Acquisition, which as most seasoned army gamers will know are the usual fare when it comes to this chosen craft. Each style has 3 maps in each, one for each army location, but all of this is culminated in a Directives section, which allows you to play in matches with that magic 256 number.

The way this huge virtual battle works is that each match of 128 soldiers is cut down into 2 teams of 64, which are then split into 8 platoons of 8 players. Each set is given an objective, but it’s not an essential to head towards it, giving you a chance to do what you want. What you have to remember though is that MAG is a TEAM game, so if you go in with a Call of Duty or Halo head on, you will be mowed down very quickly, so it is best to develop some sort of game plan with your fellow comrades before setting out.

As I say, it’s an ambitious project, but as much as it does pretty well for the most part, there are some niggles in there. The graphics have had to be cut down a little to reduce any chance of lag, which is understandable when you consider what’s going on. It still looks good enough to enjoy, but it suffers from a slightly less than smooth frame rate. When you play others in the genre, like Call of Duty, you have a 60 frames a second engine, which allows for a very smooth and precise experience. With MAG you do see a noticeable drop in this department, more so in the matches with higher end numbers.

My second gripe is with the actual amount of stuff on offer. As much as they are huge maps, 10 just aren’t enough for me, especially for a game that only has an online mode and no single player story to speak of. There will no doubt be DLC (I’ll be shocked if there isn’t) and this will help to bolster the numbers up, but I still feel a little bit cheated with a lack of not just maps, but game modes too. Capture the Flag with numerous targets to aim for, Hardcore versions of each mode, eradicating that feeling of “I loaded a clip into him and he’s not dead, but he gets me with one shot.” problem. There isn’t a huge amount of work required to add an extra idea here and there, so why wasn’t this done?

The only other thing, for me anyway, is your starting arsenal. Like most shooters these days, you have to earn XP in order to get yourself some decent weaponry and add-ons for them. I’m all for that and don’t mind this option being available, mainly because it gives you an incentive to continue playing, but you also need to have at least a half decent selection to start off with. Here you have a choice of 3 main guns, a pistol and a rocket launcher; and until you level up, that’s it. A little more variety at the start would have made a fair bit of difference.

The gameplay is solid however, as you’d expect from Zipper. SOCOM was a very good game, so it isn’t unfair to expect another playable title here. The controls, while being intricate, work well. The idea of working your way up the ladder to have the chance to order about the entire team or even one of the platoons gives some desire to carry on; and the maps, while small in number, are very well thought out and never feel empty even when they are the size of a small country. If it wasn’t for the little things they didn’t quite get right, this would have been absolutely tremendous, but what MAG shows us is that although we are a massive step closer to attaining a huge battlefield with hundreds of people getting stuck in simultaneously, the technology still isn’t quite there yet to give it the polish it needs.

For those fed up with the glitching of CoD and the jumping shenanigans of the Halo groupies, this is a good enough alternative to check out. Teamwork is key here, and any game that encourages people to work together, rather than think they’re Rambo and head off only to come back in a body bag is good in my book. If the small problems are ironed out in time for a sequel, should it come, then I reckon this series could well be a major contender in the future.

VideogameUK verdict: 7/10