Massive Action Game… well the name says it all actually. Zipper have taken two of the greatest online first person shooters, Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Battlefield Bad Company, and combined them into one massive online war zone.

The game revolves around the conflict of three private groups, S.V.E.R, Raven and Valor who wage war in order to gain military contracts. You must choose from one of these three factions. Fight with them until you reach level 60, only then does the option of changing factions become available. This creates a sense of loyalty to your chosen faction and grants an almost ‘die for the cause’ mentality.

The game has four battle types;

The first being Suppression: which is a team death match amongst your faction’s players, this serves as a training ground before you fight the opposition factions.

The Second being Sabotage: is a match whereby you are either defending your strategic points or attacking the enemies. This introduces the player to the method of capturing and defending objectives. In all match forms, the defending team fights in their home territory and plays away when attacking a rival faction. These two battle types are a great introduction to the game.

Once you level your character, you unlock the last two game modes, which allow for battles ranging from 128 players to 256 players.

The third game mode acquisition: in this mode the attacking team’s main objective is to commandeer their enemy’s vehicles from deep inside their well fortified base, depending on whether or not the opposition are a bunch of “co-ords”. This requires the attacking team of 128 to fight through fortified positions, destroy important locations and roadblocks all while the defenders are doing their utmost to repair all of what you have destroyed.

The final game mode is domination: This is all out massive warfare, where MAG shows its true form. 256 players fighting through heavily fortified regions to gain control of SIX strategic points. To win domination as an attacking team is seriously difficult, as achieving victory relies heavily on teamwork. It is a great feeling knowing that all 127 blue dots on your mini-map are your allies. Contrary, it’s not so great when all the blue dots are gone and 128 red dots surround you. Your gonna die. Soon.

The main downfall of MAG is that the enjoyment of the game is dependent on whether or not the player’s team is performing well. Having seven out of eight noobs in your squad is never really going to lead to an enjoyable battle.
MAG’s graphics are in the same league as it’s competitors, Battlefield and COD, and thus satisfy the online first-person shooter’s requirements. Environments are detailed but not overdone and work just fine as a semi-destroyed moving on to being destroyed battleground.

The leveling system is similar to that of Battlefield Bad Company where by each level gained gives you a credit to spend on whatever you desire. The options though closely resemble the unlocks of Call of Duty 4 which allows you to develop your character to suit your style of play.

Gameplay requires a tad of thought as selecting a grenade works on with use of a different select button, so don’t be caught with your pants down holding a grenade as seven enemies with automatic weapons jump out and mow you down… and no you won’t have time to throw it.

On a whole MAG is one enjoyable game to play when the battle is tilting in your favor. If not you spend the majority of the game waiting for respawn and swearing loudly at your online teammates, who prefer running from an enemy, rather than shooting them. Sometimes you miss the old Soviet Union. The scale at which the battles are fought makes it a new experience in online game play with the server easily being able to handle the amount of users.

Rating 7.5/10

Rodney Colin Burke
Games Writer

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