MAG Beta Don’t get shot REVIEW!!!

If the heavens were nice enough to shine their bright light upon you, you might have got an invite into the MAG Closed Beta which started on Sept 17, 2009.

As I was one of those lucky human beings and I am here to tell you about the wonder that is MAG.  To begin for those who do not know, MAG is a PS3 exclusive first person shooter.  What makes this shooter unique is its boast that it will support up to 256 players.  This is an incredible feat and needless to say had many doubters but surprisingly Zipper Interactive has done it.

To start off there was a whooping 2G update to play the game, but once you got started you realized it was worth the wait.  Players can choose from 3 factions.  Valor, S.V.E.R, and Raven.

You can choose the look of your characters but as you might expect there are currently few character models, and disappointingly no female ones.  Valor wears your typical GI Joe looking clothes while S.V.E.R. and Raven are more uniquely styled.  S.V.E.R, integrating hoodies into their gear and Raven in all black clothing appearing very sleek.

After choosing your faction you can adjust your loadout as you see fit and even make various loadouts which can be equipped before you respawn in battle.  Players can also wear different types of armor; heavy, medium, or light. This armor determines your agility in battle and how much protection you will have.

Currently, whatever faction you choose, your friends need to choose the same in order to be your allies.  There is no way to switch factions unless you delete your character and start over.  Once you and your friends decide on a team, a player can start a party and invite everyone.  The party leader can then deploy the entire party into a game where they will become a part of an eight-man squad.  There is voice chat enabled which makes communicating easy.

So far the game has three modes; Acquisition, Sabotage and Domination.  Acquisition holds up to 128 players and the objective is to break in and steal enemy vehicles from deep inside their base.  Sabotage hold up to 64 players and is all about defending and attacking.  Lastly, Domination holds up to 256 players where they fight to secure and hold eight targets.

Players can earn exp. to level their character and also gain skill points to acquire new abilities or weapons such as the sniper rifle or faster reload times on a specific weapon.  Exp. is earned by kills and successfully completing in-game missions.  There is also a system called FRAGO which allows squad leaders to place a waypoint on various specific objective points and anyone getting kills or completing missions within the radius of the waypoint gets double exp.

During my play time I was in Acquisition with 128 players and experienced no lag.  It should also be noted that the maps were not barren waste lands or deserts. They included a lot of trees, buildings, props to use as cover, some water areas etc. These were very detailed maps and the game ran with no lag.

Vehicles are also available and can be spawned in by selecting them on the respawn screen minimap.  If the vehicles are destroyed players will have to wait for them to respawn again.

MAG also uses Medics; players can at first only heal themselves if the medic tool is equipped.  With additional skill points players can level up this ability and be able to revive bleeding out teammates.

While MAG was awesome, there were some obnoxious bugs such as dying only to get trapped in a respawning loop, spawning in geometry and as a result getting trapped there, or walking around invisible after death (never bleeding out) to name a few.

There are also small gameplay issues. With the Sniper Rifle, a target that appears to be in range sometimes isn’t.  There is no indication that this target is too far away which becomes very frustrating.  Also even with the long range scope targets are still hard to hit at far distances and in close distances the scope will zoom past the target.

Another issue I had was with the name tags of enemies. The tags were unable to be seen at distances making it hard to determine who is an enemy or friendly at times.  I do understand that this was possibly done to prevent too much screen clutter, but for snipers it can be painful.

Lastly, so far RPG rockets are useless, they don’t seem to do any damage to anything especially vehicles which is very disappointing.

In conclusion, my experience playing MAG was extremely fun and felt very rewarding.  I believe once the bugs and minor issues found in the Beta are resolved it will easily be one of the best selling FPS’s for the PS3.  I am looking forward to playing and buy the final product which is set to release January 26, 2010.