its really sad that zipper interactive closed/ mag and socom servers are down since 2014... its sad and i had very good memories of this game.i played this game over 10 years ago and its still the defination of a perfect online game. not cod not battlfield not any other games fill this game for me
and i have NO IDEA WHY SONY AINT DO ANYTHING FOR REMASTERING THIS MASTERPICE OR MAKING A MAG2??????????????????????
Massive Action Game delivers on the promise of its name. It's certainly massive, and there is more than enough action to go around. MAG's biggest draw, however, is that it's perfect for both hardcore multiplayer FPS fans and newcomers alike.
MAG is a tough game to review. There's so much keeping it from being a must-own (lack of single-player campaign, visual problems), and yet the multiplayer is really engaging after it opens up the first couple of hours. If you need a combat fix and can't wait for Bad Company 2, this is definitely worth renting.
A lot of bugs and lack of content soils a game with a fascinating concept of vast online battles. Maybe something for the real war enthusiasts, otherwise we advise you to stay away from this.
I'm never motivated to write Metacritic reviews but this game truly has a special place in my heart. To get it out of the way, I don't think MAG is perfect even though I'm giving it a 1, but I don't believe any game is perfect and MAG is easily the best shooter I have EVER played, to this day, and ive pretty much played them all. Honestly this game just came out too early and was too ahead of its time, I really think having a Freemium Planetside 2 model would have given it the legs it needed to stick around.
MAG's biggest problems were lack of polish and art style, but boy did it make up for those in spades with everything else. The gun control was extremely tight, the netcode and servers were amazing for a 256 player landscape once the initial kinks were worked out, the factions were extremely well designed with unique identities, and there was lots of continuing support and content. I've sunk more hours into this game than any other shooter, and even make than RPG's like Skyrim. Which brings me to their best feature...
The actual game design. Holy HELL was it good. The entire command system and squad system was SO WELL DESIGNED that it's actually an insult we haven't seen it in Planetside, battlefield, or other scale games. The objective bonus, officer powers, chat system either to your subordinates or your fellow leaders, was all seamless and efficient. The game modes were very well designed to give the more tactical thinking side a big advantage, and make you feel as if you were actually executing an operation rather than just running around shooting people. The game's environment had weight, if that makes sense.
The skill tree was also fantastic. Rather than arbitrary class systems, MAG let you design your class around your playstyle. Things were balanced with a credits system and speed system. So if you wanted to have high health and a heavy sniper rifle or LMG, you were gonna walk like a Juggernaut. Conversely if you wanted to zip around and run and gun with a stealth jammer, you were a two shot kill. You could be a demolitions medic, a stealth sniper, a shock assault, whatever you wanted. The class system was designed in an RPG style but still had some traditional shooter level unlock elements, but it was SO well designed and games haven't brought that back since, choosing to give everyone the same health and minimal speed differences, or basing speed entirely on weapon and not overall gear.
MAG is the most criminally underrated video game I've ever been lucky enough to play, and I truly hope that one day someone realizes the vast amount of potential and at least brings back a spiritual successor. The game was not a failure, it sold 1 million copies and plenty of DLC. Maybe one day, we will be able to play it again.
DO NOT BUY! Servers are shutting down the end of january. Plus the game is pretty dead as is, only 1 mode is played and you usually have to wait over 5 minutes for a game. The fact that I'm seeing this game everywhere in retail for a rly good price is kinda sad. This game will probably be sold as a used game even after the servers are **** this game is absolutely nothing without its servers. This is why fps belong on the pc. Consoles are such money **** it's not even funny. They have this unspoken rule of being the cheaper to play model. Well they aren't. Stores make their money from console games. People return them and they resell them. In comparison you can't return a pc game or trade it in to a large vendor etc.
The game? So I started playing this in 2012. This is probably the best fps console game for clans. Basically this is for alot of reasons, but one in particular.
After you die you go into a dying state, and can be revived to full health with the click of a button by a teammate that is even 10m away from you! you can literally be **** **** **** **** **** a never ending loop.
It makes for some interesting gameplay. When you are in this dying state the enemy has to shoot your remaining health to **** this usually amounts to more than half a clip from an assault rifle. It takes about a whole clip to kill some1 with heavy armour and 120 health....then you have to **** then empty another 12 rounds into the corpse to prevent any nearby enemies from reviving the guy you just killed. It rly doesn't matter how many kills you get in the game, what matters is how many you "finish off" after you kill them. As you might imagine an army of 2 is many times stronger than an army of 1. This is rly a team game and staying with your squad and team is how you win the matches.
ALot of good cool things about this title though. in sabotage (the only game type with people in it right now) you spawn from an aircraft and parachute in after you succeed in the first 2 objectives. While parachuting in the enemy can shoot and kill you before you even make it to the ground. I like this. I like that a team is rewarded for playing well together. Spawn protection is a rly stupid thing in fps imo. That said, the defending team is always given spawn **** so are the attackers up until the final objective. If you run too far into the enemy zone you just die. So I mean..what I'm saying hardly applies to even 1/4 of your gametime.
Other thoughts: there's 3 factions. you have to pay extra money to unlock more than 1 character profile (lol). I mean this prevents people from just going back and forth between factions (which I get makes sense), but....whatever give them money and you get an edge. 2-3 of the gametypes (it was 2 I think) were locked and you had to buy. They made one of them free a year or 2 **** there's 1 locked gametype you have to pay for still....which noone is playing (at all) so is a waste of money. Hell this entire game is a waste of money if you are reading this. You have till about the end of January before your rental expires. Then all you are gonna be left with is a basic basic basic 1 minute training mode.
I didn't play this game with a **** with a buddy or whatever. So take my score however you want to take it.
Also in each game type the wins per faction are tallied up and the winning faction gets an ingame passive reward. However these rewards are just for show. Were talking 5% increases in leadership range (rofl...useless) and 5% less cooldown on artillery (more rofl). It's a joke rly. If they made them worth something maybe I would take pride in every game I won or thought for a moment that it made a difference if we won or lost a match.
Other gripes: Heavy machine guns **** in this game big time. game winning strategies sometimes amount to grenade spamming the enemy position so they stay dead when they die and can't be rez'd over and over.
Oh and 1 more thing. If you want to know why your lovely game is so dead look no further than the community of clans. You do not want to be on a team with clan members on it. If you are, chances are they are going to be jerks and kick you either right before the match is over or half way in or right away. They either do this to make room for another clan member or because they are jerks. Either way they end up being jerks since when you are kicked you lose all exp and money from the match. The kicking system: if 4 members on the squad vote yes you are gone! It is rly easy to get kicked. I mean this is great for kicking team killers and guys abusing their mic. But typically you will have 4 members of the same clan in your squad, and they can boot you anytime they want to. There's no repercussion for kicking an innocent player. So maybe clans should ponder that for a while when they complain that "everyone is a cod or bf noob, that's why there are no players left".
Some people say MAG stands for Massive Action Game. They are absolutely right! This game is massive. In some modes, there can be as many as 256 players playing together. The action part is spot on too. Many times I found myself in the middle of a huge battle and couldn't decide where to go, because every direction looked dangerous. There are some things it could work on though. One thing is it can take as many as 20 minutes to join a game. The only other thing I can complain about is you can't choose which map to play at. The network chooses for you, which can be really annoying because I once played on the same map 8 times in a row! While it's no where near a perfect game, MAG is an excellent substitute to CoD and Battlefield.
What disappoints me most about MAG is how the PS3 hardware is incapable of coping with the 256 player game modes MAG boasts. Game maps are larger than normal but not terribly so, but large enough to separate the players into different hotspots during the 256 player modes. Teams of 128 are split into different segments so initially the game feels like a 32 vs 32 game. As the game mode progresses, more players meet in flashpoints and the framerate tanks under the pressure. My PS3 locked up numerous times during the 256 player game modes, even after cleaning the dust out of it. Because the controls are so sloppy and wonky, people seem to mostly nade spam in the hopes of downing the newbs who blindly rush into the meat grinder. The weapon variety is stale and you'll find yourself grinding for in game currency to get better guns of which there are only a couple meager improvements. You'll also struggle to keep up as you grind for XP to invest in enough skills to increase your survivability and make the game playable. Coordination is essential in this game, and yet so few people have mics. The game had ambition, I'll give it that, but it utterly fails in execution.
Horrible, the game does not have enough content period. There are barley any guns at all and the guns are even very different from each other. Its like they made the the game half way then sold it. Plus if your on SVER it takes 20 min. to get into a match. If you buy this game be ready to get killed by the people who sit around all day and play it. You never get that sense of scale this game just fails everything. DONT BUY
Summary2026: The Post WW3 political climate forces the world's superpowers to eliminate their military and turn to Private Military Corporation. The three largest PMCs engage in a Shadow War to control the global, paramilitary contract market. Enlist and enter the world of MAG. Join a Private Military Corporation and begin your paramilitary car...