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MAG: Massive Action Game

Published By: Sam Leitch On: 28/05/2009 10:00

AT A GLANCE

"Another much welcomed A+ exclusive?"

The Good: Should deliver a huge sense of scale.

The Bad: Connections? Rouge Players? Impersonal?

The Ugly: 256 players all at one chokepoint.

By Sam Leitch

Despite sounding like something you’d put on your car, MAG promises to be one of the biggest FPS games around. See if the following sentence excites you. MAG is a 256-player shooting game by Zipper Interactive, the company behind the majority of the SOCOM games. MAG is hopefully just a project name, standing for ‘Massive Action Game’. Sure it sounds cheesy as, but it is what it is.

A 256-player war game sounds like carnage, and that’s what is promised. That said, there will be some order to the madness as teams will be divided into eight-man squads. The squad leader can decide the team's objective, which will see many teams heading towards mission-critical waypoints. Some teams will go it alone, whereas others will join up and help each other out. What this means is that there will always be a heap going on and that strategy will be as important as good gun-slinging skills. To help everyone play nice, you get a lot more experience points working with your squad than if you go Rambo.

All this would be for nothing if the game didn’t deliver some amazing settings. Luckily, judging from early gameplay trailers, MAG takes place in some huge open-ended maps with towns full of detail and objects to use as cover. Each map will have a good many strategic locations making for interesting scenarios ranging from stealing vehicles from a base to taking out key gun emplacements. Of course, there will be a range of map sizes to accommodate smaller games.

Graphically the game looks more than competent. The graphics here will never be groundbreaking considering the amount of data the system and the servers need to crunch, but that said MAG does look good. Hopefully with the ground-up game engine created for MAG, movement will also be smooth to not destroy the sense of realism the graphics convey.

Often when a game promises as much as MAG, it’s easy to be sceptical, but with veterans of the genre behind the helm this game may just live up to the hype. And although a 256-player game may sound daunting, jumping in with a team of seven buddies sounds like a huge amount of fun!

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COMMENTS (14)

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On 28 May 2009, 01:30PM Posted by Nivicious

looks good, sounds fun

On 28 May 2009, 02:47PM Posted by citysoldier

Expect Massive Lag & Insta Spawn Deaths like never before!

lol who knows could actually be a good game

On 28 May 2009, 04:36PM Posted by Flea17

Very, very ambitious. 256 player multiplayer has got to be a dream for Kiwis, what with out internets, but you might be able to LAN that many consoles if you're really dedicated. That'd look awesome!

On 28 May 2009, 04:37PM Posted by Rapidity

Sounds great in theory, but I can't imagine it will be playable in NZ or even Aussie for that matter without dedicated servers

On 28 May 2009, 05:32PM Posted by kiwi161

I hear it is going to be playable at E3. Looking forward to seeing what Lucy and Tristan think.

On 28 May 2009, 09:34PM Posted by The Host of Chaos

This really sounds insane. But I am interested in this.

On 29 May 2009, 09:13AM Posted by lexcalibur

Looks cool, really amibitious.

Just hope it doesn't turn out like Resistance 2 with the potential and map size for 64 people, but only 10 are in the map. That turns into a twenty minute trek just to find an enemy...not too fun.

On 29 May 2009, 10:28AM Posted by twisterjamz

sounds like a mean as multiplayer game

On 29 May 2009, 01:45PM Posted by citysoldier

Reply to lexcalibur29 May 2009, 09:13AM
Looks cool, really amibitious. Just hope it doesn't turn out like Resistance 2 with the potential and map size for 64 people, but only 10 are in the map. That turns into a twenty minute trek just to find an enemy...not too fun.

They could make it like only a few dedicated servers in each area then ppl will have to join one of those (With best ping I guess) but even then its not likely to ever fill up. Would hate a spawn death game with nades everywhere and getting killed as soon as you spawn. Happens in smaller games already. Wonder how this will turn out.

On 29 May 2009, 04:50PM Posted by arnies

Its not called Massive Action Game any more. They dropped that now its just reffered to as MAG.. just a heads up

On 30 May 2009, 04:01PM Posted by Bank

This game looks AWESOME.

But NZ players are gonna' get lag killed 24/7!!!
We just can't keep up :(

^_^

On 31 May 2009, 03:06PM Posted by Gazza22

This is a huge hit and miss title.
It will either take of and be pretty darn epic or it will simply fail.

On 2 June 2009, 02:12PM Posted by Barnicals

I've got butterflies just reading this.

But yes, lag will suck. Arg. Spose I'll need to move to the US to play it to its full potential. *sigh*

It's still going on the wishlist.