MAG

All in all, MAG is a more than decent game and it comes recommended for anyone loving multiplayer. The tactical element is deep enough to make MAG a very good game, but it can also tackle it. You’ll be dependent on the tactical skills of your fellow players to get good results. If everyone does what they are supposed to, then the satisfaction will be high. When things go awry, then frustration will soon follow. Aside from the occasional map that is too large, there are no structural errors a gamer will get stuck on. The question is whether the lack of a single player will deter some gamers.

Technically impressive but MAG is too scattershot to universally appeal. [Mar 2010, p.84]

A classic approach to the Online FPS genre with the blessing (?) of 256 people connected to the server. Massive, but not so incisive.

A solid FPS, with ideas behind it that should have made it epic, but in practice, many of the grand ideas fail to translate into viable experiences. The fact that I didn’t experience any lag in over 50 games, regardless of the number of players on varied connections, is no minor feat. It’s very nearly there, and with some tweaking could be the future franchise to overwhelm them all.

Overwhelming at the start, underwhelming by the end. A solid online shooter but not essential. [Apr 2010, p.84]

The irony then, is that the game which can accommodate the greatest numbers of players in the history of the medium will be best enjoyed by a dedicated few. For those players, at least, numbers really aren't everything.

It's not the finished article by any means, and through updates Zipper may realise its potential. It needs more game modes, tweaks to the spawn system, better controls, and it needs to make everything a lot clearer for those who find clans and massive action intimidating. If it does this, MAG will gain a foothold and thrive.

Unfortunately, it didn't show that more players means more fun. Bugs, imbalances, and a lack of content for the price make what could have been an excellent game just decent.

Your mileage will vary greatly in this epic-scale shooter that rewards only the most dedicated.

MAG’s player count is an impressive technical achievement, but the game world feels oddly mechanical. Outside of the high player count, the uninspired world fails to stand out from the pack. If every gameplay mechanic were kept intact and shrunk down to a 16- or 32-player game, MAG would be an experience as generic as its title.

MAG, much like actual war, is often an ugly, confusing mess that tosses a group of people into extraordinary situations where they can overcome through teamwork or die as frustrated individuals. If you're looking for just another game to see your name on top of a leaderboard then keep on walking.

MAG is a tough game to review. There's so much keeping it from being a must-own (lack of single-player campaign, visual problems), and yet the multiplayer is really engaging after it opens up the first couple of hours. If you need a combat fix and can't wait for Bad Company 2, this is definitely worth renting.

It's such an uneven and eventually tiring experience, I think this is a good foundation on which to build a franchise, its just they need to make it so much more.

If you can recruit a legion of 256 like minded players then MAG would be an experience like no other, but its potential is sadly lost as, at this primal and critical stage, it still needs time to fully flourish.

MAG is not particularly user-friendly. I am told that below its exterior, if you find a good clan and have a good headset, it is a deep, fluid military shooter with hundreds of hours of gameplay lurking within it.

Kudos to Zipper for being trailblazers in terms of how many people you can cram into a game but beyond this USP, MAG is a fairly generic affair. It all works well but it isn't mind-blowing. And with a full-price tag, minus an offline campaign, it's hard to see where the value for money lies here.

Swings wildly and rapidly from the incredible to the mundane. [Mar 2010, p.108]

MAG delivers a massive online multiplayer for up to 256 players, a good matchmaking and almost no lag. The maps are huge, but they come with a mediocre design and you can see only four of them when you choose your army. The frame rate has frequent issues, while the sound effects are mediocre. We were expecting more from Zipper Interactive's PS3 debut.

While innovating with its 256 players on a battlefield, the end result was not positive enough to make the game stand out among so many other good titles for online gaming.

Relies a bit too much on the players to make the game fun. [Apr 2010, p.70]

MAG is a multiplayer game to the core. It doesn’t have a single-player campaign, scripted sequences or AI-controlled bots – only online battles and nothing mode. In the times, when Battlefield and Unreal Tournament feature storylines, cinematics and dialogue, Zipper’s creation feels like the last of the Mohicans. But the lack of a story is not what killed MAG. The concept, the release time frame and the rivals did.

If anything, the game is a tech demo of sorts for what is possible in online gameplay. It delivers a fun experience and whether or not that's worth the price of admission now or until the game drops to $40 or $30 is up to how dedicated the person is.

With its robust clan support MAG still offers a cooperative experience on a rare scale for bands of dedicated players willing to weather the unnecessary confusions and ungenerous structure of the early game. For the rest, MAG rarely deals out the empowerment and clarity of purpose that other team shooters, like the forthcoming Battlefield: Bad Company 2, offer from the get go. It’s not quite ‘welcome to the suck’, but gamers may wonder if MAG’s a battle worth fighting.

It doesn’t provide an experience – it merely provides the tools with which to make an experience. Therefore your enjoyment is really dependant on whether you’re the type of person who is likely to seek out and become a member of an existing clan, or have enough online friends to create your own. If you’re not, then you’re much better off sticking to the more user friendly Battlefield, or COD: MW2.

On one hand, MAG is an ambitious experiment that has delivered on many of its promises – it genuinely offers lag-free 256 player online battles with a huge potential for team work. On the other hand, it is a game that struggles to find a sense of purpose beyond this, or a real sense of identity.

An interesting idea, but it's fundamentally flawed in its execution, with too much trust placed on trigger-happy gamers to overcome these barriers to play. [Issue#93, p.126]

MAG tries and does some things well. 256 player battles still seem too chaotic and the game relies heavily on having a good team which is hard when it's a public style offering.