MAG Monday week 1 – “From a little spark may burst a flame”
Welcome back. You're a regular here, so why not follow us on Twitter too...
The year is 2025. The Third World War has come and gone; Governments have fallen and economies have collapsed. Beneath all this a secret power struggle rages – welcome to the Shadow War.
Three private military companies vie for power, recruiting whoever offers themselves up to the machine. Each soldier that gets enlisted to the ranks threatens to tip the scales of power.
Through the fog of war emerge three battered figures. Team Attitude has heard the call, and duly responded. If war is hell, then consider us damned.
Arriving via an armoured escort comes our illustrious leader DolphGB. Not one for sitting idly by, he can be found running through the battlefield screaming quips such as “get out of the flower beds, you’ll ruin them vile heathen!”.
Up next, parachuting in from 15,000 feet comes Brodiesan. After untangling himself from the trees he has no hesitation in getting stuck in – literally, he loves his knives!
Last, and without a doubt least, is Folken24. This bullet scared ‘noob’ of war is currently in the Medics tent being treated for his horrific injuries (sprained thumb and rickets – The tabloids were right!).
Welcome to the inaugural edition of ‘MAG Monday’. Team Attitude are big fans of Zipper Interactive’s latest game – MAG. However, there are a suspicious amount of very similar reviews out there which always seem to end up with a 70% mark at the end. Can an ever evolving online game be reviewed after just a few hours? We think not.
DolphGB, Brodiesan and Folken24 will each be making weekly reports from the battlefield – comparing likes, dislikes and anything humorous that may have occurred. This will hopefully give you a flavour of what the game is all about.
DolphGB
Faction – Raven
Current rank – 12
Fun fact – “Everything was going swimmingly. We’d taken A & B in double-time and everyone was moving towards C with speed and efficiency. But then the SVER dogs started to get organised.
My favourite MAG moment so far is not a moment of glory for myself. Oh no. In fact, it is quite the opposite. SVER set themselves up left, right and centre of the C point and managed to achieve something hugely impressive.
As we fell from the sky on our parachutes to take C from their grubby hands, they managed to shoot us down, squad-by-squad, before we could even land. Every single one of us. Four times in a row! We eventually got down on the ground, but by then they had every tactical position covered. Although I was the one dying, it was hilarious!”
General thoughts – “The best point tally I’ve managed to achieve so far came from a mammoth sniping session, where I had zero deaths and managed to get the Streaker Medal (15 kills in a row without dying), Longshot Ribbon and three trophies in one game.
As I’ve progressed through the ranks and unlocked more features, MAG is really starting to come into its own. I’m about 8-10 matches away from level 15, where I can start to lead a squad – should be fun!”
Brodiesan
Faction – SVER
Rank – 7
Fun fact – “Some Raven goon was defending a communications tower. After popping his head up, he then proceeded to JUMP off the the tower at me. As I didn’t think he was going to show himself, I had switched to RPG in order to smoke him out. BOOM! Rocket caught him in mid-leap and sent him SOARING through the air backwards.
Two of my squad mates were beside me and, thanks to the proximity chat feature, when I said “Can you fly, Bobby?”, quoting the popular quip from Robocop, they just burst out laughing. We bonded over our love of 1980s action classics and mutual desire to wipe Raven off the face of the world. Forever.”
General thoughts – “You really need to stick with it through the first few ranks, but suddenly everything will click into place and that is when things start to get interesting.
My next target is to reach rank 8 and unlock the 256 player match. This should be epic!”.
Folken24
Faction – Raven
Rank – 5
Fun fact – “My most satisfying moment so far came a couple of days ago. I had been killed six times in a row by the same damn sniper and was getting monumentally irate, so I decided to include a sniper rifle in my weapons loadout.
I belly crawled back to the last spot I was killed and looked through my scope up at a warehouse about half a mile ahead. Nothing – I couldn’t see a thing.
Not wanting to admit defeat I took a complete ‘Hail Mary’ shot in the dark at one of the warehouse windows and whaddaya know, a ‘+5′ message appears signalling I’ve registered a kill, and the snipers name comes up.
My reaction was that of completely unprintable joy. Unfortunately I had my mike on at the time. Getting a hard earned kill – excellent, making your whole team think you’re a foul mouthed psychopath – priceless!”
General thoughts – “When this game is good, it’s really good. Not being a fan of online shooters, I wasn’t expecting to be sucked into MAG’s world. Needless to say I was wrong. When everything falls into place it’s a slick, fast paced adrenaline rush.
I cant wait to see some of the stuff I can unlock as I rank up – next on my shopping list is the revive ability!”
So there we have it. Our lads have just received word they are to be sent over the top any minute now. All surviving members will report back next week for a debriefing on how the MAG experience is panning out. Dismissed.
Buy from – Simply Games : GameStop : GameStation
All sales made through PS3 Attitude help our charity fund.
I’m finding MAG to be a very rewarding game. It does start off a little slow, but as you rank up it gets better and better. I made it to level 15 yesterday and was able to act as squad leader for the first time in an acquisition game. If felt real good to win that match. (And there was a silver trophy for that too
) I’ll see you guys on the battlefield. (In my gun sights if you’re not in Raven 
)
I would get MAG to play with you guys but would you let me play with you?
MAG is rated T for Teen, so if you’re 13 or over then you’re fine.
Awesome, I may see you on the battlefield.
Due to varying schedules we rarely get a chance to team up, however if I saw you online I’d have no worries regarding teaming up
I would probably be on SVER, Raven looks like too clean.
My greatest M.A.G. moment of the week came in a Domination game. We were losing badly and hadn’t even taken the first set of towers with about two minutes left. Or squad leader quit and I got promoted to the position. Dropped a waypoint and six of my squad met up there. Next I set a bunker as our target and we charged it. There’s nothing more wonderful than sprining at a bunker with your squad picking off all the defenders. We took the bunker but lost the match. Was great fun.
Best KDRs of the week were 17/2 and 9/0.
Release it in Australia already! (Doesn’t come out here until Thursday). Sounds like it’s going great guys, really looking forward to getting right into this
.
Axe99 I’ll give you the same advice Brodiesan gave me, always run and always crouch, there are snipers everywhere!
Thanks mate – cover is _very_ important on the battlefield. Played plenty of SOCOM, so got a reasonably good instinct for it, but in a game like MAG I’m sure it’s an order of magnitude more dangerous. Which is actually pretty realistic
.