The year is 2025. The optimism and harmony of the 2010s were completely eradicated by 2020. A global crisis loomed. Food shortages sparked riots, currencies plummeted, fuel reserves dwindled, and oil-producing nations began to ration what remained. It is a dark future. Governments earmarked money for humanitarian efforts, overseas security, and intelligence services which, over time, found its way the coffers of a small group of Private Military Companies (PMCs). These three private armies (Valor, Raven, and S.V.E.R.) then began to recruit aggressively. Soldiers without a country, the contractors fight wars that never happened. This is the nature of the Shadow War.
And I've been playing the Beta (which you can too for pre-ordering the game, limited supplies). I have mixed emotions, of which the negative stem basically from intense beginners frustration. But overall... all I can say is WOW.
MAG is a massive action game. The battlefields are just enormous, and so is the number of players in each game. Think Battlefield 1942, except very very next gen. After a couple days playing the beta, let me explain what really stuck out.
Customization: You can really customize your look. Depending on which faction you're playing for (by the way, I don't think you can change this unless you change your character... thus starting from square one) you get to choose face and voice, armor, helmets, and the works. Outside of battle you can set your "load outs." You can have more than three of these. When you are in battle, after dying, while waiting to spawn again, you can pick a different loadout to spawn with. Different loadouts just have different approaches, for example one loadout has Assault Rifle + Frag Grenade, while another one may have Sniper Rifle + Smoke Grenade. You can set it to whatever you want, really.
Progress: As I gained EXP in matches with the sniper rifle, I got 3 xp per hit, and 5 xp per kill. From a long distance with the sniper rifle, you will have to take into account the moving target considerably if you want to hit the head. Fire about 3-4 heads length in front of the head in the direction he's running. These shots are absurdly gratifying. After every round, your experience gained is totaled up and ranked. You have an experience points bar that fills up, and when it's full, you obtain a level and a skill point. Skill points can be spent on a MASSIVE skill tree, ranging from just about every upgrade you can think of. Some examples of things I saw on there are: Steadier sniper rifle aim, less time spent between sprinting, faster reloads on all types of weapons (the initial reload times from the get go are noticeably long, in my opinion), and more. There is also a built in clan system.
Massive Action: So what is the ACTUAL gameplay like? Well, since the map is so enormous it has a unique feel when you spawn. You can choose your spawn point while waiting to spawn, and there is some nice variety in this. Allow me to backtrack for a moment to explain. Let's say the map has two objective points, A and B. Your team will start with 4 squads, 8 men on each squad (32 total). Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta. Alpha and Bravo squads will have spawn points in or around objective point A, while Charlie and Delta will have spawns around point B. After you really get into the thick of things, you can choose to spawn near point A or B, whichever you feel needed at. Once objective points A AND B are captured, a new objective, even further up the map opens up - C. Since C is virtually in the center of this humongous map you get a new option to spawn, which is air drop via parachute. It is very cool to say the least. When you're dead, you are usually waiting about 15 seconds to respawn, and in this time can easily change loadouts (weapons and gear) to your presets and change spawn points.
Feels pretty good. In the thick of the action, I would relate the feel of the game more on the Call of Duty side than the Halo side. A well placed shot is typically your absolute best bet, and the game has an aiming mechanism, by holding L1 you look down the barrel of the gun for better accuracy, though your foot movement and look movement are drastically slowed. Pressing in the Left stick (L3) is sprint, and the right stick (R3) is melee. I can say that in three days of playing this, I may have melee'd about twice. Might have something to do with playing sniper alot. I took to the sniper class because the levels are just so damn huge that it's easy to find unsuspecting enemies who don't anticipate a sniper looking at them from so far off. I place 2nd or 3rd out of 32 teammates in kill-death ratio doing this. Take that as you will.
We'll have to wait and see what this game is like in it's final form when it comes out for the PS3 only in January. I wish I could have leveled up more, but alas, it's only a beta. This game is DEFINITELY up any FPS players alley, and might even be abnormally attractive to those who don't play FPS too often, simply because of the robust level up system. You will have a lot to show for your efforts and at the end of every match you will want to go back and browse through all the new options available to you. Eventually you can level up to be different tiers of squad leaders, which enhance the players around them with things like faster movement speed, faster health regen, and all that. I'm looking forward to this game personally, and I'll buy it when it comes out. It really feels revolutionary. It might deserve a genre called MMOFPS - but we'll have to see - there's a lot of great games coming out in Q1 of 2010.
[http://gamerators.com]
We're a group that reviews video games across multiple platforms including consoles, PC, and mobile. The staff comes together from a broad range of backgrounds and interests - giving us a diverse, unbiased opinion in our reviews. We bring different types of reviews to the table - offering a more dynamic experience for readers.
This Gamerators.com site is part of the creative "eLFEO" series, derived from the singular concept of "eLearning From Each Other". Think of it this way: what better way is there today than an interactive blog to deliver factual, thought-provoking information to one another - where Comments become chapters in the educational text. We find the original, creative and insightful input from bloggers to be the ultimate source of new ideas and learning.
This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.
No comments:
Post a Comment