Stepping into Battle with MAG

MAG is a multiplayer only Massive Action Game that is exclusive for the PlayStation 3. These games always sound like fun but in reality are sometimes not feasible for South Africans because of Internet challenges.

MAG is probably the first one that is. Gamers will get thrown right into the trouble by downloading a 250 MB patch first up and then connecting to the PlayStation Network (PSN). From there, gamers will create their character, pick a faction and go into a training scenario to get the controls under wraps.

Gamers will then be able to deploy into two different modes: Sabotage and Suppression. Both of these are war games for players of one of the three difference factions: Valor, S.V.E.R and Raven.

MAG is your normal generic first person shooter (FPS) game, so not a lot can be said about it there. What is quite brilliant is that when playing online, players with even the smallest of ADSL lines will still be able to enjoy the game as it has a truly fantastic netcode.

Granted that MAG was released a while ago, when compared with something like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (BFBC2), it actually still manages to do a decent job. The only thing missing from MAG is the destructible buildings which add a lot to the gameplay of BFBC2.

The gameplay in MAG is fast and fluid and gamers will enjoy the sensation of feeling like they're a part of the squads. Players will be able to unlock new weapons and war modes as they gain experience and level up through the war games.

Possibly the most irritating thing in MAG is the time it takes for games to fill up; sometimes this can be incredibly fast but might at times take between ten and fifteen minutes to load up.

MAG looks great and has some really good game dynamics added to it. The scenery around the maps look very good and make for a really enjoyable experience while playing.

MAG offers a new sense of realism, as things that explode actually do so with a real radius. Standing too close to a grenade will kill a player outright instead of just damage them. The same applies for bullets which will put a player on red and keep them wounded for a decent amount of time.

A full review of MAG will follow shortly on Telkom Do Gaming.