WeView: MAG

Let’s be honest here, MAG is a silly name. Well not MAG itself, that’s fairly cool. It’s more the fact that it came from Massive Action Game, quite possibly the most on the nose working title anyone’s ever created. It does feel a little bit like someone at Sony or Zipper went “Lets just shorten it to MAG and grab some lunch.” What’s worrying is the fact that it probably didn’t happen like that, in all likelihood they spent a few hundred thousand dollars for a brand consultancy to decide on sticking with MAG. Oh well, such is the naming of games.

Sorry, I’m probably supposed to talk about the actual game at some point, rather than the fact I think it has a silly name (it is quite silly though). So for those of you who don’t remember it, MAG was Sony and Zipper Interactive’s attempt at taking console FPS games to the next level. Just how big are we talking? Well it goes all the way up to 256 players, so pretty big. Was it successful in its goal though, that’s the real question.

Well we scored the game at an 8/10 when we reviewed it last year, although it came with a simple caveat; we were basing it on limited time with a game that was obviously intended as an online experience. It’s difficult to review games with the scope of MAG, so I’ll certainly be interested to hear what you have to say about the title now that we’re way over a year out from release.

In fact we had the same thought back in January, when Dan decided to revisit the game. How did he find it a year after release? Well lets see:

Overall I’m so impressed with how far MAG has come in twelve months, and the stuff I’ve detailed above is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of tweaks and modifications.  Sure, it’s still a hard game to get into but the wealth of post release support has made it a much superior product.  The servers have apparently seen a spike in activity recently, so now would be a great time to jump in and have a go.

So with even more time having passed did MAG leave up to its lofty ambitions? If you feel like sharing your thoughts just head over to the forums and leave us your thoughts on the game. Whilst I’m not going to discount longer reviews, please remember that the aim is for short, snappy opinions. More than that I simply don’t have the time to wade through longer reviews, so if you want to have your opinion included in the verdict post try to keep it short.

Once you’ve written your review make sure you give it a score on the Buy It, Bargain Bin It, Rent It, Avoid It scale. Remember, if you want your score and opinion included in Monday’s verdict post you need to have it done by Sunday afternoon, otherwise I’ll have written it and you’ll be left out in the cold.