MAG: Massively Awful Game?
Opinion article time, people…
Personally, I’ve always thought the idea of up to 256 armed lunatics ‘gunning it out’ online would be an incredible (if slightly chaotic) experience. Sadly, I’ve been far too preoccupied to participate in the ongoing MAG Beta myself, so I’ve been speaking to a handful of individuals who are taking part to get an impression of what we less-privileged gamers can expect.
Predictably feedback has been both good and bad, yet surprisingly more of the latter has been said about Zipper Interactive’s upcoming MMOFPS. ‘The levels are poorly designed’, ‘it takes ages to get into a match’, ‘there are long delays between spawns’, ‘it’s disorganised’ and ‘the frame rate is abysmal’ are just some examples of the comments I’ve received via email and the PSN.
So I want to put this to a bigger audience. If you are involved in the MAG Beta, we want to know: do you agree with the above remarks? Does MAG have the potential to convert Killzone 2 and Call of Duty fans? Or will this title amount to nothing more than a poorly-produced pipedream?
Comments welcome.
Filed under: Betas, Games, M, Massive Action Game
i have to disagree with the given examples to be honest! i think the levels are great! they hold the size of the players well, and you cant enter the enemys spawn so that defeats spawn camping, the only thing would be the buildings alot of them aren’t accessible so thats the only flaw i’d give the levels, and the respawn is only slow in the full 256 gametypes because well imagine if all 256 players were constantly respawning? there would be no winners! you wouldnt have ANY time to achieve the goal, and ok the graphics could do with a polish BUT i think they are pretty damn good for a game that has 256 CUSTOM characters and guns plus maps to fit them all in, and again its only sometimes the full 256 player gametypes that take awhile to get into, as for disorganised? that must be a joke? the game is so in-depth its crazy! im saying all of this based on my own experience of course some others disagree but yeah.. and no it wont match killzone 2 or cod because they are they’re own games, this is completely different, it will be M.A.G and nothing less.. hate or love it, its coming
I am participating in the BETA, and as far as I can see the game won’t sell very good and wont amount to what it could have been. The guns are poorly animated and feel weak, the time it takes to get into a match is mindblowing and since the base of this game was teamwork, it fails to show any effort of organised warfare.
Now that MW2 has released, barely anyone will have interest in a game thats ten times worse then what they are already playing, and on the note of 256 players, you never feel as though your in a game with 256 players.
Thus far if I had to give the game a rating I would give it a 5/10
‘Zipper’ has been going downhill every since Socom3 hit the shelves, and quite frankly I think they just need to give up.
I have to disagree with some of the bad comments, i’ve been playing the beta for a few days now and have been thoroughly enjoying it, the graphics aren’t 100% tip top but thats to be expected with the number of players, people seem to forget it’s still work in progress.
I have to admit, I haven’t heard great things about MAG, but I guess everyone has their owns tastes. I think MW2 has the FPS genre on lock right now…
@Phil, even though it is in progross you have to realise that not alot will change, a few animations and hickups here and there and its done.
I’ve been lucky enough to participate in the MAG Beta, the Battlefield Bad Company 2 Closed Beta and have been playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Here are my impressions:
Mag Beta: Feels very ‘last-gen’, takes forever for you to get into a match and once you are in the sheer number of players makes it impossible to do anything other than run around and shoot @ random gunfire before dying a miserable death only feet from your spawn point. The frame rate is crappy and it just doesn’t “look and feel” like a next-gen title. This is no longer in my ‘buy it’ list.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: This game is pretty great, the campaign story is awesome and gripping. The soundtrack by Hans Zimmer really gets you into the game while you are playing, and come on..who doesn’t like Lance Henricksen as General Shepard. Now multiplayer: It feel like Call of Duty: World at War (I own all the map packs and zombie levels), was the first thing i thought. Don’t get me wrong, they added a lot of cool stuff, but I will admit, it still feels very ‘arcade-ey’ and very much like the last Call of Duty, only with extras added..it doesn’t feel very ‘fresh and new’, just the same old multiplayer w/a few extras added on…BUT, it’s always a lot of fun playing a COD title. This is a ‘buy it on sale’ title for me.
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BFBC2 Closed Beta: This game is fantastic, the look and feel of it is incredible. The weapon accuracy and physics they’ve added to the game truly make it one of the best war simulators I’ve ever played. Little things like ‘bullet drop’ when using the sniper rifle or gravity effecting anti-tank artillery make it seem all that much more realistic. You have multiple weapon unlocks and a ranking system just like the 1st 2 games. Multiple vehicle types including an ATV are great when you’re riding around with an infantryman on your back taking out soldiers running around. This game is on my ‘have to pre-order’ list.
There you have it, my impressions of all 3 games. Let me know what you think.
I played the beta for about three days before i gave up i thought it did have some very poor graphics definitely last gen the spawning took up to between 5 to 20 second wait the maps weren’t very well built and it does take forever to get into a game. One thing i did like about it thou was the rush you got when things started to get really chaotic or when your rushing into the battle with your squad sadly enough thou thats not going to get me to buy it.
“‘The levels are poorly designed’, ‘it takes ages to get into a match’, ‘there are long delays between spawns’, ‘it’s disorganised’ and ‘the frame rate is abysmal’ are just some examples of the comments I’ve received via email and the PSN.”
that why they still call it beta^^
I thought it was great. and all those socom fans will love it! This is gonna sell as well as killzone 2. GH by 2011.
j,hate to break it to you, but killzone didnt sell very well at all.
J, stuff it!
Socom fans will not love it, I loved socom all up to SOCOM3 which ruined the series.
SOCOM 3rd person
MAG 1st person
SOCOM tactical
MAG run and gun
GOOD SOCOMS – Small maps
MAG – massive maps
SOCOM – soundtrack worth your ears
MAG – bitter soundtrack
@ odin:
Very true, though you didn’t hear that many criticisms from players involved in the Uncharted 2 Beta. Furthermore, little changes between Beta and final release save a few performance-related factors. If a game sucks at Beta, it’ll only suck a little less come release – that’s generally the rule of thumb, anyway. But I’m not going to condemn MAG as I haven’t played it.
@ Chris:
Great comment, thanks for your opinions. I must take a look at BFBC2 when it comes out…
Right the fact it takes ages to get into matches (which it dosn’t for me ) is the fact theres only a few thousand allowed on MAG atm and there split betwen sabotage and domination
The frame rate is fine and the animations are getting better the further along the game progresses, most of the time people listen to me the only real time they don’t is if there new or if the platoon leader ~ oic is telling them to ignore me, the levels are well designed i think they put things in places so that areas can’t be dominated too much and snipers can’t just sit in one place(which is probably where that remark comes from as cod players are used to just being able to camp) and hows 20 seconds long spawn time fuck me most people waste twenty seconds without even thinking about it.
meh rant over
These are my own views and are not the views of my clan
Also many people call MAG because when they get on it and realise they need to work as a team and can’t be rambo they wander back of to cod and take up their old camping spot and call MAG shit and people who realise that without the added lag advantage that they get on COD they do rubbish because they arn’t as “skilled” as they thought they were they also call it.
Plus many people who you recieve emails and messages off are probably xbx fanbois who just call it because its a ps3 exclusive
ok heres the thing when i first played uncharted 2(it was closed beta) the graphics where good the gameplay was tolerable but after they released it it was 100 times better .thats what im hopping for mag (if they added a cover system & better guns i would get it ) and for battlefield 2 im getting it but it dosesn’t feel like a war game it feels more like a action movie and think thsts what players want that surreal experience mixed with a real experience (not me preffer a game like operation flashpoint) wuth a couple of tweeks and a mission editor i would never put it down ….AT LEAST MAG IS NOT A XBOX OR PC PORT
Why are people getting bent out of shape? This is an OPINION article, not a slanging match. Alan needs to calm down for a start – just sounds like he’s mad ‘cos he sucks at CoD…
Let’s all calm down shall we? As for me, I’ve played MAG and it’s good but flawed. I think there’s much to be done before it comes close to titles like BFBC/MW2/Uncharted 2.
i got the beta from qore and i have to say im not getting this, hell no
This game is not living up to the hype at all. I played it a couple of days then regretted participating in the beta. Its feels rushed even for a beta. The respawns are horrible. The guns don’t feel balanced very well. The maps are pretty good imo. But it takes to long ti join a game, and the gameplay is not worth the wait.
Alan, why would Xbox fanboys want to play the beta of a title for a console they hate? And then feedback to a writer for a PS3 website? You can’t go off on one because people don’t like the game, we’re all different.
meh go to forums and stuff about the ps3 exclusive games you’ll see lots of xbx fanbois there and no i do pretty good on cod its just a highly overrated game that everyone acts is like a gift from god.
I also don’t mind people not liking it some of my clan members don’t like it but they give better reasons then the ill thought out ones that crop up on here
All of this is exactly what Zipper wants, as it is called a BETA, where they take this feed back, and improve / enhance the gameplay and experience for players, where they still have about 3 months, from today, and it can be greatly improved, where even Zipper said the BETA is out in a sort of medium power stage, and now the closest at all to the product they have almost complete, just like when the huge patch, i believe it was like 1.20, it gave the graphics higher settings, and had some tweaks, as well as the big 1.46 patch, changing some things for the better, and A LOT of stuff is missing from the finally game because this is a BETA.
In addition, i would like to say i really really enjoy this game, as it is a team based shooting game as many mentioned, not a small, one man army call of duty style game, as this game is MAG, not call of duty, and in my opinion, as an all online focused game, this has high potential in being better than call of duty’s online component.
Only problems are long waiting lists for games, bad gun designs, people dont die easy enough. I shoot them 3 times in the chest and they still have enough time to kill me, hmmmm
i love this game
the only problems i can think of are having to wait the length of the match just to join a match.
when using a sniper rifle i sometimes find myself shooting the enemy 5 times before they die, two or three would be fine but any more than that is kinda rediculous.
the sights on some of the guns are almost useless.
the reflex sight isn’t really better , just different
i don’t find the respond time all that troublesome but i don’t often wait more than 15 seconds
i do hate that if ur changing spawn points or something and the spawn timer gets to zero it seems that u miss your spawn
i haven’t yet found zoom on either of the sniper scopes, if it exists
i am not sure if you can heal your team right off the bat or not but if not you really should be able to
there isn’t any type of cove system
i like the upgrade organization
i am also quite happy w/ the graphics
i absolutely love that u can lay completely down and that you can squat and then run w/o exiting squat automatically or having to manually.
that is all i can think of right now
MAG will be a failure – i was looking forward to the beta but now i know its not a game for me – graphics is not everything but the graphics are just crap ..it donsnt feel like you are playing a AAA title it feels like a very low budget game i dont get zipper they want to have more players and bigger maps – just f”””’ remake socom 2!
it will probably only sell 256 copies lol that game is crap the e3 2008 trailer got me very excited but the e3 2009 demo was just crap – graphics and frame rate is crap – get shut in ur ass all time crap unless you camp
its waste of money dont buy it!
battlefield 2 beta is way better.
This is my first Beta and I have to say that I really enjoy the game as a warfare type game player. You are always going to have those that think it should do this or that, but given what it has to offer, I think it will be a hit. I have played all the wartype genre games and would like a little from this or a little from that, who wouldn’t, but again, we have to keep in mind the ulitmate goal here. The latest Beta updates have improved on wait time for joining games and improved on the graphics some. I suffer NO LAG what-so-ever and the framerate only really suffers if I am in the middle of a Grenade Frag All Out Shoot em up gun mele, and it is not bad at all even at that. Rip it apart as you may, but so far so good for me.
I second Chris’s remarks. After playing both the MAG beta and the B:BC2 beta, Bad Company 2 is just leagues ahead of MAG, both in terms of gameplay and overall design. I loved Bad Company for the single player, and liked the multi, but something about BC2 just has that “magic” feel that I felt when I first played the Modern Warfare 1 beta.
It’s so good that I already paid off my preorder of BC2. My only conundrum: I reserved it for 360, even though I love the PS3 beta, just because I’m accustomed to getting multiplatform FPSs on 360. The thing is, BC2 is so good on PS3 that I forgot I was holding a DualShock. It just feels extremely well polished.
Generally, the Battefield games bring less moronic kids to the table than the likes of Halo and CoD, but I may have to consider changing my preorder to PS3 just to give my PS3 some FPS love that isn’t Killzone 2. Players on PS3 tend to be a bit more mature than 360 gamers (not always, but often), and that lends itself very well to games like Battlefield.
Any thoughts?
By the way, I didn’t hate MAG. It just was a bit more run n gun than I was hoping for (especially being a huge fan of Socom 2). I think it has potential, but it’s not proven in the beta, as far as I’m concerned.
Disclaimer: I’ve only tried SOCOM:Confrontations and couldn’t get into it. I gave up after half an hour. I am playing MW2 (first in the series for me) and it took me a while to get used to that style of gameplay. I am/was in the MAG and Uncharted 2 Beta.
I invested quite a lot of hours in MAG Beta and enjoyed the overall experience. It did take me a while to get used to the style of gameplay which, in the end, suited me quite nicely. Here are my takes on it:
Good size maps. Lots of places to explore/camp/attack. Not all buildings are assessable but that’s fine. Look, MW2/Uncharted2 has smaller more compact maps; great design and loads of nooks and crannies for the size of their maps but if you were to scale them to the same size as MAG’s, it’s unreasonable to expect that every building is assessable. You would just end up spending half the time trying to find somebody to shoot!
Spawn delay. Quite a number of folks are complaining about the delay time when spawning. In MW2 you can spawn almost immediately and this helps in maintaining the fast pace of the game. In MAG, yes it can sometimes get quite frustrating, more so if you change spawn points and find that you missed a spawn window. Be aware though that the delay is to introduce the concept of the attack/defend window ie. you don’t spawn on your own but with others to encourage that you continue to work as a team, to attack/defend as a team. That means enemies tend to come in waves which during quiet times, let you re-supply and re-evaluate your strategy. Also, this allows for different gameplays to exist ie. one where not everybody is constantly attacking/defending (it helps medics/engineers/tacticians to not get overwhelmed).
Graphics. Yes, it’s not as good as most of the current crop. It reminds me a bit of the good old days of Counter Strike when folks continued to play it despite newer games coming out with better graphics. Again, the easy excuse is that for the number of players and computer crunch time, something just had to give. KZ2/MW2/Uncharted2 all have awesome graphics; MW2 is one shockingly great atmospheric game btw but when the gunfights get frantic/chaotic, seriously, I am not thinking about the details on the trees or the textures of the walls on the houses. I’ve got better things to focus on.. like surviving. SImilarly, if the game kicks off nicely in MAG, you wouldn’t really be griping about the graphics. However, I do believe that if you’re a sniper in MAG, it’s not an easy ride because of the draw distance can be annoying as things don’t load up fast enough when you’re scoping.
Weapons. Not terribly good. Pretty poor actually. They are balanced too much to the point where you can just pick any gun and it’ll do. However, playing MW2 is very frustrating when you’re up against some super high ranking player with a shotgun/pistol akimbo. Very small chance of escaping an encounter like that. In MAG, the super players are, sure enough, good but not so much that you won’t have a chance.
Player lobby. It’s so-so with regards to joining a game. I personally felt that trying to start a match in MW2 and Uncharted2 felt longer… especially when folks started quitting the lobby and the search for players begin.. yet again! MAG doesn’t inform you that it’s trying to find the most optimised server/player… it just puts you in a queue and you wait your turn to enter the fray. Maybe they do some sort of optimisation in the backend.. who knows.
I think that overall, it all comes down to what style of FPS that you like. Smaller maps that MW2 have are advantageous in that it keeps the action constant and fast paced. MAG is a slower game but it’s nice that I don’t get gunned down at every turn. I do like the FRAGOs (team commands/objectives) which is issued by your platoon/squad leader which if everybody follows, adds to the excitement of functioning as a team. I have to say thought that the first few weeks of MAG was more enjoyable than the last few games that I had. And that’s mostly down to the type of players who were in it. The initial batch issued good commands and made an effort to work as a team. The latter batch were just filled with trigger happy commandos who wanted to strike it out on their own… which meant that the game couldn’t progress well as you can’t really get through the defences on your own. Anyway, just rent the game and try it (properly try it for a few days.. and not just minutes) to get used to the game style if you’re unsure about it. It’s all about getting used to the different nature of the game.
PS – I don’t like the big huge Hollywood style (aka arcade like) ‘achievements’ during gameplay in MW2. It’s somewhat annoying and does not make for an immersive experience. I’m surprised *sarcasm* they don’t show messages like “24hit combo with 2x multiplier” if you spray a guy down with a machine gun. Not that that is stopping me from continuing to play that game! LOL!
i think mag is a great game im on the beta and also have one extra code if your intrested add me on psn LA-Z-BOY-_-
Well everyone, I managed to get in on the MAG Beta after all (thank you Niko) and having spent several hours on the battlefield – after an excruciatingly long install and a ridiculously long wait to join a skirmish, might I add – I have to say this game is… a confused mess.
Don’t get me wrong, shooting people was fun. Great fun, actually. But most of the time I had no idea where I was or what I was supposed to be doing. Plus, all I could hear from headset-wearing teammates was ‘what’s going on?’, ‘where are you?’ or ‘where do we need to go?’, which wasn’t comforting. Too much was happening at once, and as a result the experience was chaotic and incoherent.
I think Zipper Interactive’s ambition is admirable, but MAG doesn’t do it for me. Controls feel awkward (the Call of Duty button configuration has become second nature to me), maps are too big (and yes, I do realise they’re built to accommodate 256 players), waiting 14 seconds to spawn is annoying, the graphics are average at best, the frame rate is sluggish, and the gameplay is disorganised.
With titles like MW2 and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising available, and EA’s BFBC2 on the way, my opinion is that this game will struggle unless serious improvements are made between now and release.
I have been participating in the MAG beta since September and must say this is the best game I have played in a long while and I believe people need to give it more than “a couple of days” to make correct judgement, as the learning curve is alot bigger than most games like this. Lets not forget that a very large number of participants in the beta thought it was another fps, which it is not, you don’t even have to pull your trigger to score a win for your Team! Please wait until final product before judging! Graphics are fine an when there were above 8000 players queues lasted 40 seconds to a minute MAX, just wait, you’ll see
i got 1 beta code if u want it so u can see if its good i will giv it to u just email me Su-Yun@live.com
Has anyone else had the problem where u can’t spawn? The timer gets 2 zero and just resets wifout u spawning?
i guess i am just getting old. I love battlefield2, its graphics werent amazing but the playing had some class to it some respect for each other. MW2 i can woop some serious butt, except i often end up in games where i feel like i am playing with the cast from lord of the flys just a bunch of imature kids with no thought process acting like idiots. the xbox ps3 debate, yeah of course ps3 has more mature players most ps3 owners are the smart ones who research stuff and picked the better console as opposed to the xbox which got popular because of halo and then of course the sheep followed and now there stuck(most of them) MAG has two ways to go, you have the mw2 idiots i was refering to earlier that you try to play a simple thing like capture the flag and these kids are too adhd or retarded to even manage that, so something like MAg that requires thought and team work as well probably wont go over well with these idiots.