MAG - Review

Written by Chad Grischow Tuesday, 02 February 2010 03:04

User Rating: / 4
PoorBest 

As the saying goes, 'with great risk comes great reward'.  Things do not get much riskier than putting a massive online-only first-person shooter, relying heavily on team communication, on PlayStation 3, but that is exactly what Zipper Interactive did with the horribly named MAG.  Fortunately, the name is about all there is to gripe about.   

MAG is set in the year 2025, where the three largest Private Military Corporations, or PMCs, are entangled in the Shadow War.  The story is really just a reason to get the players on a battlefield to shoot it out.  The story itself does not play much of a part in the game, other than to keep the three factions at each other's throats.  You begin by creating a soldier and immediately selecting the PMC to join, with little to go on other than a brief promotional video explaining the benefits of each.  Select wisely, since once you make a decision, you are stuck with it until you max out your character and are given the opportunity to start anew; with some bonuses for doing so.  You will want to make sure you are joining the same team as your friends; especially if you want to be in the same clan and play alongside them.  An easier method to change companies would be nice, but looking at the rankings for the modes, there is not that large a discrepancy between any of the three companies.   

The three PMCs are unique from each other, with some equipment differences to consider.  Valor is the result of former US Army officers banding together, known more for their experience and reliability than technical expertise.  Raven is the European fraction, comprised mostly of French, German and Italian forces.  Raven lacks experience, but makes up for it with some of the latest in virtual training for their soldiers.  S.V.E.R. is the third option, and the least established of the three.  Comprised of Chinese, Indian and Russian soldiers, the video explains that there is an element of criminal background in their ranks.  With fifteen faces and nine voices offered to create your character, it seems limiting until you quickly realize that the game is not about 'you'.  There is major risk involved in releasing a game that only offers online-play, but at the game's launch there is a large enough community to make it work; and Zipper's expertise provides plenty of reasons that it should thrive.   

Zipper is responsible PlayStation 2's successful SOCOM series, and it is important to mention that they were not involved with the frustrating SOCOM Confrontation launch.  Anyone expecting server issues or lag here can rest easy, MAG is a rock-solid online shooter.  As can be expected with any title that allows for 256 different internet connections playing the same game, you might occasionally have a slight hiccup, but in our experience with MAG that was a very rare occurrence even in the largest and most harried battles.  Zipper learned a great deal from the days of Socom on the PS2.  The separate servers for regions are gone, as are the lobbies.  Instead, you simply select the mode you want to play and jump into a view of your platoon and its squads.  With the game just freshly released, the largest game mode, Domination occasionally takes around a minute to fill up to playable size.  Until there are enough players, you stay in the mode menu, with an option to track the queue's progress.  It is a much improved system over the old, frustrating method of repeated lobby hunting.   

Zipper also finally jumped on-board with the importance of respawns, and improve on the concept with their own take on a respawn timer.  With so many squads in each game, and loads of deaths every minute, the idea of lonely soldiers trudging their way back to the battlefield alone would make for a boring experience.  Instead, the respawn timer is a constantly running twenty-second timer.  Each time you die, you simply respawn with everyone else recently killed as soon as the timer hits zero.  The result is a new swarm of soldiers all running to the waypoint together.  Sometimes it means you wait a full twenty seconds and other times it means you almost instantly respawn.  It really helps sell the concept of teamwork in the game, since you are never far from your squad.  There are also contracts assigned to the company currently holding the tightest grip on a certain mode, which offers that company’s players bonuses while playing them. The game does a fantastic job of making you feel like a cog in the machine, rather than a lone wolf.   

To that end, the game strongly discourages the 'Rambo effect' of players running off and doing their own thing.  The sessions you play with gamers who think they can freelance in-battle are short ones, with the team working together wiping the map with the team of 'all-stars'.  The fastest way up the ranks in MAG is by completing the objective you are assigned at all times.  Killing and healing always nets you experience points, regardless of where you are on the map; but performing those tasks in your objective's zone nets you double experience.  Experience is vital to your soldier in the game, with new modes unlocking as you level your way up toward the more involved game modes; along with all-important skill points used to better your character and equipment.   

At first, only solo training or Suppression are available to you, with the latter serving as a sixty-four player team deathmatch scrimmage against your own PMC.  It is the most basic of the modes, but does reward your practice with valuable experience points.  Sabotage is your first whiff of real action, pitting your company against another as one attempts to stop the other from controlling two satellite stations simultaneously before moving on to destroy the main objective.  The larger, Acquisition pits two teams of sixty-four against each other as one company attempts to steal two experimental vehicles from the other.  The last of the modes is the gigantic Domination, where you see the full 256 player war play out against two teams.  It is somewhat of a larger-scale version of Sabotage, with many more points to destroy and defend.  The game modes themselves feel great, but the game limits each team to one 'home' map per mode.  The result is a total of three maps for each of the three modes, which feels a bit short of what the game needs.  Thankfully, with how large the maps are, especially on Domination, it will take you quite a few plays before seeing the full scope of even one map.  With Socom 2 among the first titles to offer additional maps in its day, it seems likely that Zipper will build upon the decent map offerings with DLC.  We have our fingers crossed for a new mode that would pit all three companies against each other for control of a single point in the center of the map.  Those cannot decide which mode to play can head to Directives, where the game assigns you a mode based on company need.   

The idea of being just one in a team of 128 might seem overwhelming, but MAG does a nice job of making each player seem important by splitting the teams up into manageable groups.  In a full-scale game, the 128 are split into 4 platoons.  Each platoon is made of 4 eight-player squads.  It divides nicely, allowing you to hear only your squad mates in your headset; with nearby chatter from non-squad players relegated to the television speakers.  You will definitely feel the difference between a squad working together to strategize and point out enemy locations and those rare squads that work under relative silence.  The game is best played when squads communicate, and the community has really grabbed on to the concept well.  In our experience, the mic-usage is much higher in MAG than on any other game on the system.  Whether it is the double-experience in objective territory or the general ‘team’ concept of the companies, the vast majority playing MAG have mics, and are much more interested in talking strategy and enemy location than other team-based games.  

 The rank system does not really mean much to you until you reach level fifteen; which is where you can finally apply for a leadership position for your squad.  Each squad can have their own leader, with another leader up the chain of command for the platoon, and another yet for the company.  Each of the leadership levels comes with additional abilities to enhance the gameplay for the team, like setting a new waypoint or calling in air support for gamers to parachute into combat a bit closer than the typical spawn locations.  Even before you have the leadership abilities, MAG does a nice job of dangling that carrot of improvement in front of you with a skill point awarded with each increasing level.   

The skill points can be used in the ‘barracks’ section, where you mold your soldier to fit the way you want to play.  Additional weapons and weapon enhancements can be unlocked, in addition to new gear to heal teammates, mines to set, or simply enhance the physical prowess of your soldier.  The options come in the form of a smartly laid-out menu system, grouped by enhancement type, in a tiered system.  You cannot simply hold out for five points to unlock the best medical kit.  The game instead requires points be spent in the previous tiers to earn your way to it.  It is a bit similar to the ‘perk’ system of Call Of Duty, but MAG forces you to think out your choices better.  You must earn the right to ‘re-speck’ your abilities, with the first ability coming around the 3,000 XP point, or about level 10.  Re-specking your character is the only way to un-do poor choices, and the XP required increases with each passing re-assignment of points.   

The game controls great, with weapons not quite feeling as perfect as Killzone 2, but not far enough behind it to make it an issue.  The only slight complaint is the need to cycle with the left-trigger between your medical kit and grenades.  An assigned button for your grenade load-out would have worked better, and prevented those embarrassing moments where you hastily drop a grenade at your squad mate’s feet rather than healing them.  That little frustration, and sticky ladders in a few control points, are the only minor complaints with an otherwise excellently controlled game.  The game sounds and looks very good without being one of the standout titles on the console, but you are playing MAG more for the experience than the sights and sounds.   

Despite a few very minor complaints, MAG is a slam-dunk, must-own title for PlayStation 3; and one that should sell systems for anyone still holding out for a great Socom-style title on the system.  You have not played anything quite like it, and will likely find it hard to put down the controller once you do.   

9.2/10