Killzone 2 and Resistance 2 for the PS3 are both decent games, especially when played online. But neither is likely to tempt 360 owners - who have a stack of first person shooters for their console – to investigate the charms of the PS3. Forthcoming game MAG might. The original title – Massive Action Game – gives it away. This is a first person shooter that sees 256 players simultaneously on the same battlefield. The game was recently showed off in a pre-E3 event and the press seem excited.
MAG is fun. In fact, it's massive fun. It's fast and loose, free-flowing, improvisational, spectacular, structured without being too rigid; it accommodates lone wolves, team players and power-trippers alike, and makes it easy for players themselves to direct the action. You'd expect it to be intimidating, but it actually feels like the FPS for everybody. Even after just one 20-minute, 128-player match, it's hard to shake the feeling that, one day, all multiplayer shooters will be made in its image.
The game breaks down the chaos of 256 players by dropping the player into a 16 player skirmish and then up to a 32 and 64 as you gradually meet up with other members of your team. Eurogamer explain.
If you're talking sheer chaos, in terms of, if you drop 256 players into a village square like an arena, that's going to be unmitigated," says creative director Ed Byrne. "So what we wanted to do is build that intensity and use that flow to direct players from small encounters to larger, and to basically make sure that squads link up actually more like a realistic military operation.
Huge in every way then, MAG has the potential to revolutionise the increasingly conservative first person shooter market. Heck it may even have ousted Uncharted 2 from my PS3 most wanted list.
What do you think then? MAG doing it for you?
