PlayStation Holiday Preview Event
MAG
By Jorge Figueiredo - October 18th, 2009
MAG (Massive Action Game) is an interesting concept. As a massive multiplayer first-person shooter, MAG utilizes a new type of server architecture that allows up to 256 players to engage in battle simultaneously. Each side is composed of platoons, which are in turn composed squads. Squads can contain up to eight players; platoons can contain up to four squads; and companies can be composed of up to four platoons.
The story is fairly simple. The year is 2025; the world faces a security threat in the form of small military groups (gangs, pirates, etc.) and maintaining a large military has become a financial and strategic burden. Thus, small defensive forces have been created in place of full armies, and it’s these teams that respond to national threats. Bound by the terms of the Millennium Accord, these defense forces are forbidden from crossing the borders between their countries. Thus, for out-of-country interests, one may procure the service of a PMC (Private Military Corporation). On the surface the world appears at peace, but in the shadows, a war is being fought to establish dominance. You are part of that war.
There are three main factions in the game: S.V.E.R (ragtag, international), Raven (high-tech), and Valor Company (traditional). You can join any one of these factions, and you can also customize your appearance, your voice, and your battle kit.
The game is played as an ongoing, faction-based campaign. As you play, you gather experience, which in turn will allow you to gain access to more weapons. Obviously, playing more frequently will earn you more experience in a shorter time frame, allowing you to advance through the ranks. Higher-ranking folks can apply to lead groups. All told, it’s a very interesting system.
Having played other FPS games, the MAG system intrigues me. Certainly the prospect of getting new weapons and equipment is attractive, but the chance to lead other people (or, alternatively, increase your skill as a “specialist”) is very cool.
I watched Seth Luisi from Sony Computer Entertainment America play through a mission and learned a lot from it. He mentioned how the spawn point system is similar to those in other games: as you advance, so do your spawn points. But one of the neat features of MAG is the mobile spawn point. Driving into the enemy area in a tank transport or parachuting out of a plane is pretty damn cool.
Luisi also explained how each squad contributed something different to the overall mission. Some blow up key targets while others are assigned to push forward or defend certain areas. This sort of team play appeals to me – even though I tend to play characters with ultra-long-range weaponry (read: sniper), I do enjoy the dynamic of team play (my friend Kirk and I are a deadly Engineer/Sniper two-man cell in Team Fortress 2).
I participated in the online beta for MAG and the game looks really sweet so far. Having so many people online at once doesn’t seem to affect the performance, which is definitely to the game’s benefit as you are certainly immersed in the war-torn world of 2025 very thoroughly. When playing FPS games, I tend favour the multi-player mode, and this game is all about that! I’m looking forward to playing it again in the future.
