MAG

Guns and ammo

You're opening yourself up to a potential sh*tstorm of criticism if you're going to call your new game MAG: Massive Action Game. You'd better deliver on that promise by bringing the action and by making it massive. And it had better be a game too. It had better be a Massive Action Game.

MAG's core concept of staging vast battles that cater for up to 256-players is undoubtedly an ambitious one and a conceit that we have to admit, struggled to visualise. But amazingly, MAG pulls it off with seemingly effortless aplomb by simply dividing players into manageable squads of eight all working towards the same objectives.

Each company consists of four of these eight man squads, which are themselves split into platoons of four. So, that's four times four squads of eight, which equals 128-players per team. Are you with us so far, soldier? Good.

While MAG undoubtedly delivers quantity, the question is, does MAG manage to imbue the experience with quality? At first glance, Zipper Interactive appear to have been playing a lot of Battlefield: Bad Company, because not only is the visual style very reminiscent of DICE's lauded multiplayer shooter, but some of the objectives and controls are lifted wholesale from the game.

In fact, MAG's controls are a nice hybrid of BF's and Modern Warfare 2's, blending sprinting and melee attacks on the L3 and R3 analogue stick buttons respectively with Bad Company's awkward item selection nonsense on the L1 button. We lost count of the number of times we were killed while fumbling for a grenade or accidentally aiming down the sites because we brushed L2 as we vainly grasped for a reviving adrenaline shot.

It would have been far more streamlined, especially given the frenetic nature of a battlefield inhabited by 255 other players (128 of which are out to get you), to have been given a grenade button and a context-sensitive prompt to repair or heal. Instead, switching between your gear proves to be a massive headache that could have easily been avoided.

MAG's clunky gear selection is by no means a game-breaking issue, and for the most part, the action both looks and plays brilliantly. The core FPS mechanics are supremely slick and intuitive and Zipper should be congratulated for looking beyond the success of the SOCOM franchise to something as ostensibly ambitious as MAG. Essentially just another military-themed shooter with a brown and grey colour palette, MAG just about manages to go a step further by introducing such immense scale and a unique level of activity to its online multiplayer.

Yet, where genre stablemates such as Battlefield: Bad Company and Modern Warfare 2 offer single-player campaigns and other gameplay options alongside their respective multiplayer modes, MAG is quite happy to give you its uniquely proportioned multiplayer and let you get on with it. But given the variety of game types available in MAG, this isn't really a problem. It would have been a nice bonus to have an offline mode of some description though, even if it had been a series of individual missions to play alone or in splitscreen co-op.

Still, MAG's four central match types are strong enough to keep you inexorably hooked with 64-player Sabotage, 64-player Suppression, 128-player Acquisition and 256-player Domination each providing differing challenges and objectives, whether it's capturing command posts or stealing the other team's vehicles, there's always something going on in MAG.

There are also three factions to choose from, each with varying attributes that add a further layer of variety to MAG. S.V.E.R. are a rag-tag band of moderately experienced soldiers that are notorious for fighting with unmatched fervour while Valor is an army of seasoned veterans, adept in communication and tactics. Finally, Raven are the black-garbed technologically advanced group who make up for their lack of experience by packing all the best gear.

The story of the game's three PMCs (Private Military Companies) is largely irrelevant. All you really need to know is that MAG takes place in 2025 where PMCs fight for contracts in a conflict known as the Shadow War. Your character - who can be customised and is able to switch between five bespoke weapon loadouts - levels up persistently from round to round, earning increasingly higher ranks that better your chances in being selected as the leader of a platoon, or indeed an entire company.

Levelling up also grants skill points that can be exchanged for not just new skills, but also upgrades and attachments for weapons. Anyone worried that any of this will mar the experience by creating MW2-degrees of imbalance and unfairness can rest easy though. There aren't any ridiculous, ability enhancing perks beyond these weapon upgrades and squad buffs or bonuses for faction leaders, meaning that skill is rewarded over persistence.

On the surface, MAG appears to be little more than a standard military FPS with a rather special gimmick. And while that is certainly the case to some degree, there's more to MAG than meets the eye. The control system might misfire and it might whiff of 'been there, done that', but when the FPS action is as accomplished and solid as MAG's is, there's plenty of enjoyment to be had especially if you're fortunate enough to assemble a crack team of mates to play with. 255 mates though? That's a bit of a stretch. Better get on Facebook now.

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By Richard Walker