Massive Action Game Review
| Game Name: | Massive Action Game |
| Platforms: | Playstation 3 |
| Publisher(s): | Sony |
| Developer(s): | Zipper |
| ESRB Rating: | 18 |
Massive Action Game, or MAG as it’s been marketed as, is Sony’s triumphant announcement that indeed, PSN is a primary online platform for gaming. Whether recent rumours of subscription-based or pay-for services are next up for PSN, you cannot deny that MAG is a particularly epic showpiece for the service as it stands. Not since the release of Modern Warfare 2 have I seen as many people on my friends list playing the same game. And a result of this popularity, I’ve had a good chance to play this game with friends who were communicating effectively.
The Valor Massive, init
Before I get into the nitty-gritty of the review, let me say why I waited until a week or two after release to post my thoughts. The main one is the structure of the game. At first, you begin your game with default kits and what-not, and go into a still-rather-epic 64 man series of matches. This gives you the chance to learn the often awkward layout of controls – even for hardened FPS veterans on the console. Once you rank up a bit (ranking is handled much in the same way it is in most online shooters, giving you XP points with which to grade your character and level up to unlock new weapon upgrades etc.) the game will open up to the Acquisition mode, giving you a chance to play with 128 players. Then finally, at level 8, you reach the plateau of 256 man online warfare. With this leveling system in mind, I decided it was worth playing through the title with the community before reviewing it. 256 people is the key sales pitch, and there’s no point in me dissecting a title where I cannot experience this first hand.
The game is set in the year 2025, a world where full-scale armed forces have been scaled back to provide national security alone, rather then going to war. To protect the world and give it peace, no army is allowed to leave its own borders. World peace ensues, but if Hideo Kojima has taught us anything, it’s that PMC’s (Private Military Corporations) will rise from the ashes of peace. The PMCs compete for contracts, always trying to undercut each other, thus leading to a global war. This began the “Shadow War” as they tried to run each other out of business by straining supplies and raising budgets. MAG revolves around three powerful PMC factions – Raven, SVER and Valor which all fight for supremecy of the war economy.
Your first move as a new recruit into MAG is to join a side. Much like an MMO like Eve or WoW, this faction will be yours for the remainder of your gametime. This gives you an affinity with the team and ideally helps you gain lifelong comrades with which to fight alongside. The three factions are evenly split, with cosmetics being the only real difference. Raven is a high-tech European based PMC, while SVER is the obligatory (for this type of game) Russian-type faction and Valor is the Americanised band of ex-mercenary types.
Most people have been joining the factions their friends are in, but the lack of ability to run two or more accounts in the game means you never really get to experience “the other side”. This means there’s a potential that you could join a faction and then find your friends are in another one, and as such can never join together in a party to play on the same team. On top of this, Zipper Interactive have said countless times over that each faction would be fairly balanced. Thanks to our American cousins getting Gamestop pre-order goodies at launch, a vicious spiral of dominance has come from SVER as most of the players who had pre-ordered for free SVER unlocks were far better then anyone else at the start of the game. Then their quick progression through the ranking system meant they have consistently kept the game out of balance. Two weeks on, this issue has not been addressed. It’s hard to see Zipper being able to fix this without over-balancing the other factions, or under-balancing SVER to counter-act their dominance. One can only assume they’re hoping time will iron this out.
Seeing this in motion is something to behold in a game
Kills, assists, healing and repairing in a match all gain you XP. With XP comes skill points, which can be “spent” in the game to improve your skills and equipment. For example, I have bought such items as a red-dot scope on my machine gun and the ability to run for longer periods of time. Unlocks come in “tiers” which are only available when you spend a certain amount of skill points in the previous tier. Thus ensuring no one player is far out-skilled compared to his team or enemies. Which is exactly what happened with the Gamestop unlocks for SVER.
The game is split into a few game types. Suppression is introductory deathmatch-style game type. Here, PMCs fight amongst themselves instead of each other to challenge new players. After some ranking up, you can play in Sabotage, which asks factions to capture or defend two control points. When the attackers control two points, a third objective opens up, which the attackers must destroy. Acquisition seems to be the fan favourite, however. Here the attacking faction must capture enemy prototype vehicles and take them to transport choppers. Each of these modes are simple tit-for-tat modes with a defending and attacking team. Most of which helps gamers learn what to do with MAG in the ever-increasing player count maps.
The main mode, however, is Domination. These matches are crucial to the game’s “Shadow War,” and each match will contribute to the success of each PMC on a persistant world map. 256 players are split into various platoons and squads, and each one will have its own attack or defense objective. Victory is obtained as determined by the amount of damage given/sustained, depending on the map. With so many players in the game at any given time, it seems to break down into individual battles as squads and platoons battle each other in pockets of the map.
Commanders control various options in the game which help the troops on the ground. Spawn locations can be mobile, with players capable of spawning within moving APCs, strategically placed helicopters and most impressively, you can spawn in an AC-130 and parachute into the map. Seeing a platoon jump out of a plane and land on the map is amazing. And when defending against them, shooting wildly into the air you really have to catch a breath and realise just how massive the scale of this game is.
As epic and wild as this game is, it is certainly not the prettiest example of a shooter. A lot of migrating fans frustrated by Modern Warfare 2′s online modes or Killzone 2 fans looking for something new and dependable will feel at home with the controls, but perhaps may feel a little cheated by the lack of graphical flare. It’s doable, but by no means pretty.
The maps are biblically huge in scale
Success and failure often hinges on how well a team is communicating. A chain of command allows a clear communication path all the way from the top down to the grunts on the ground, allowing a strategic plan to unfold. Often this doesn’t work out when players ignore commands and run off to do their own thing. At the same time, without listening and paying acute attention to what’s going on, it’s incredibly easy to get confused. Not least because the HUD (heads up display) is utterly confusing and unhelpful at the best of times. For example, nearby action is shown on the HUD with a white flash hinting at the direction of the firefight. Often your screen gets filled with these white flashes as the action is consistent and almost everywhere around you. A yellow flash indicates someone is shooting directly at you, with red letting you know that indeed, you’ve been shot. The HUD-map itself is useful for spotting enemy clusters and figuring out where your squad is, but can be useless when dictating what objectives are required. Often it seems too much is required of you, and thus the squad system falls apart as squads are not focusing on simple, localised tasks in the game. Having said that, when communication does flow and a team works together well, this game is fantastic.
One of the biggest shames, however, is that you cannot opt to stay in a game party with people once a round has ended. This is unless they are your friends on PSN and you’ve buddied up in a party system, with one player becoming the leader and loading everyone into a game mode and server. This works well, but it would still be nice for servers to go into a map rotation with the same player list, thus avoiding dumping every player out into their own menu systems only to re-join a randomly selected player list on a random map. This becomes tedious and annoying, not least because you often find yourself playing on the same map over and over again with no option to choose a different map, or even veto the one the server has selected.
Glitches exist in the game, too. This is to be expected but can be rather annoying after the lengthy BETA period this game had. One such glitch is occasionally falling out of a plane without a parachute. You then get a suicide point deduction which is pointless and if you’re having a bad game could disparage you from continuing to play, or just send you back to MW2 or Killzone. Sometimes, too, you can end up waiting a while for a list of players to populate the three faction required to make up the 256 man game. This can be frustrating, and if the game is taking time to populate lists now, I can only wonder what it’ll be like in a few months after the dust has settled on the marketing and rival games like Battlefield have hit the retail shelves.
Overall this is a good game, and the Shadow War aspect could lead to an interesting future for this title. It’s absolutely worth having a look at, even if it’s just for the sheer spectacle of having 256 people run around without having a big performance hit on the system. I’ve had a lot of fun playing through this game and unlocking new items and ranking up has given me even more incentive to continue playing. Thus making it, essentially, Playstation’s first proper foray into the murky world of MMO game types. Whether the community stays is really a question of how much upkeep this title will get. No doubt further DLC is due, but with that they cannot alienate the gamers who do not choose to purchase it. Some tweaking to the community and party system is needed to make this a real rival to Killzone, Battlefield or MW2 online, but this is certainly a good start for the Shadow Wars.
Great review, it's hard to explain the thrill I get from playing a good game of Mag, every day more people are starting to use the mics and squad leaders are figuring out how to use the frago system. I'm in this one for the long hall! The unbalance issues need to be addressed but honestly I get more out of playing the game then I do out of winning(saying that, I do wish I didn't get headshot so much against sver)
really enjoying mag so far but losing to sver constantly is annoying and theres a few bugs too. the menu looks ugly as well
The other issue is that SVER just soak up bullets rather then actually get hurt by them. Gamestop armour ftl
I dont sweat Sver. you guys are just crap!!! Raven forevaaaa!!
It mite be because I only play aqua, Raven kicks ass is in that game mode.
meh. its alright but not as good as killzone or anything. theres too much stuff going on and no one really understands the hud. itll be a dead horse in a few weeks
[...] Posted 14 August 2010 Articles,Sony written by: Kevin A few months ago I reviewed Sony’s epic online shooter, Massive Action Game. And I liked it, quite a bit. Boils, pimples [...]