Last week the good folks at Zipper gave Playstation owners a chance to jump online and kill each other in a better way than ever before. Mag is an incredible feat of technology, running anywhere from 64-256 players at one time, with no lag. I was a doubter, I didn’t believe it could be done, and they did it. Six hours of Mag and not a single frame drop, incredible.

Mag is built on the idea that your entire squad MUST work together to succeed, and what’s even better about the idea is that the community playing is actually supporting this theory. Entire clans following one mans strategy to take out object points, destroy data uplinks, or simply kill off the opposing faction one member at a time. One game our whole team was lead to victory by one guy barking orders and us scrambling to follow him.

The game doesn’t have quite the shiny graphical edge that Call of Duty and others have shown, this is probably where they sacrificed to make the server response so clean. It did however look good, the character’s moved like real soldiers, died like real soldiers, and felt like real soldiers. The action kept me tense, and excited for every encounter, the melee kills felt real. The only real complaint I could find was sometimes I would hit these wierd patches where the game felt silent.. Awkwardly silent, and I found myself thinking, “Hey…Why is it so damned quite on this battlefield?”.
As far as the shooting nature of Mag is concerned, it is much more difficult than Call of Duty or any game containing auto-aim for that matter. The lack of auto- aim, and the experience based leveling did make me feel quite over-whelmed through my first few experiences. I have a much harder time keeping my Kill to Death Ratio in the positive, and as you can see by the video below, I’m not the world’s greatest shooter player. MAG is by no means an easy shooter, it is, however, gracious in letting you learn how to play. Before you enter into the main fray, you are encouraged to take a training course on using the basic set up of the game, weapons, repairs, grenades,and after the training you are unleashed with whichever faction you have chosen to go to war.

The factions felt very balanced and even, I chose SVER, and didn’t find myself outgunned by the Raven, or Valor. Using my maneuverability against their better armor, and weaponry I was able to hold my own. (Even though I found myself begging to have their sniper rifle, that didn’t seem to miss.)

If you’re not one for story, if you grab Call of Duty, and jump right into Multiplayer then MAG is for you. It may not have as much flash and dazzle as Call of Duty, but It does have more polish, and a new way to experience online multiplayer. I didn’t find people sticking to walls, or glitching out. In 7 or 8 games I saw ONE body floating around in a glitch after dying. Yet another impressive feat for the game.

This squad based game really impressed me, and I hope Zipper can continue to push the online experience further with their understanding of online, and mastery of technology. Go SVER.
Pick up your copy of MAG here

Score:

• Graphics : 8
• Replay : 10
• Controls : 8
• Audio : 7
• Overall: 8.25