Why MAG is better than COD… if you’re rubbish at shooters

never played CoD but bad company was AWESOME scheisse. from what it SOUNDS, MAG is (albeit, not so much graphically) pretty much like it... but with 100 and some other players...? hotdamn... i mean... hotdamn. squad team multiplayer for the big fucking win

I like MAG a lot, (go SVER!) it's a pretty cool game. Worth 60 bucks? Hell no. Worth playing? Hell yes!

My brother bought this game last week when he bought a ps3, i played it for 10 mins. Then promptly went out and bought a ps3 and this game. MW who???

I'm just going to say this: I honestly considered buying a PS3 just to play MAG. And then I realized that I'm poor as shit...

sklorbit, I think a better way of looking at this article is that it's saying not so much MAG is better than Modern Warfare 2, just appeals to a different type of FPS gamer, as you're getting at. MW2 is for people who love twitch gunplay, MAG follows in the tradition of Battlefield in that it's for player favoring tactics and teamplay over twitch skills. (I'm just like the article writer in that respect.) I don't think that it being like Battlefield should be considered a negative, as some seem to have suggested and others I've seen outright said. Whereas PC gamers have their full-fledged tactical multiplayer gameplay in Battlefield 2, console gamers get MAG. I mean, yeah, there's Bad Company 2, but that only has a cap of 24 players compared to MAG's smallest cap of 64 (I think that was the smallest) and the max cap is 256. And of course for these kinds of games, as long as the tech can handle it, the bigger the better.

Hmm, sounds like someone hasnt ventured into a battlefield game, ever

If I posted that roadkill picture in the forums, I'd get b&. Just sayin. Oh, and as a guy who spent a fair amount of time with the MAG beta...Dave's wrong. @JizzyB: One of the Level 1 default classes has an AT4 missile as its secondary weapon.

I loved the hell out of Modern Warfare 1 to the point that I played it steadily for a full year but I honestly couldn't get into the sequel at all... I can't place the reason for why, it just didn't hook me as much as the first. I plan on play MAG pretty soon, I just wanted to wait to see if it has some staying power. If it does then I'll be picking it up as soon as possible. reCAPTCHA- the rescuers (one of my favorite Disney movies lol)

What I find surprising is how every reviewer of MAG is apparently unaware that PlanetSide ever existed. There's never any comparison, even though all the strengths and weaknesses mentioned apply (predictably) to both games. Doubly odd there's no comparison, considering they're from the same publisher. And the whole 256 players thing might have been impressive were it not for PlanetSide supporting 400 ...five years ago.

although im pissed at cod and already traded it in a gamestop towards BFBC2, i just recently got MAG and i find it OK. i dont have a mic and i just spend 60 bucks on a game, i dont wanna spend another 50 on a mic, so im returning it for now, but ill prob get it later when it cheaper. also, a problem i had with mag was most people (including me) suck. im level 3 and only won one match, cuz i camped and it was kinda boring, so, if u got a mic and find a bunch of people with mics Mag would prob be AWESOME! but for now...is alright

One thing I hate about MW2 is the imbalanced killstreak rewards. You have no defense against air support until you unlock the Cold-blooded perk or the Stinger missile.

Crumbdunky, You are the man. The man of men. You totally stole my thoughts, and I plan on sueing, but i totally agree with EVERY point you said... Comparing MAG to roadkill is seriously harsh =L I think it looks great IMHO, Characters are solid, maps need more colour but awesome NTL. (ACROYNMS FTW!) but i realise thats not the point of the article, you are on MAGs side Mr. Meikleham so I salute you. But i think I'm one of the few P33PZ out there that can play both and love both games. Although I defiantly prefer MAG, and I only played Beta for about 3 hours and had like 300 kills and 100 deaths! (oddly enough I'm better at shooters when I'm drunk, I won 5 free for all matchs in a row while hammered! WTF!) ANYWAY IM LOSING CONCENTRATION ON MY POINT... My point is, MAG is just awesome, its wrongs are cancelled out by its huge rights, and is just plain sweet, no story,(kind of) but has personality, shooting is good, but so much more options at your disposal, graphics are good, not great, but cancelled out by sheer scale. And it works. It bloody works. People Im urging you to buy it, its smart. And all y'all know thats a rarity these days. EPIC MESSAGE FIN.

I kind of want to get MAG after reading this.

I was wondering when you guys were going to review this game. Just don't make it a shit review, because I've been waiting for this verdict!

I'm the same way. I can beat any CoD on Veteran difficulty, but have a tough time online.

All these are the exact reasons I prefer Battlefield over CoD. At least, until the griefers get to it.

stupid article. they are completely different types of games. mw2 is supposed to be fast and furious, with little tactic; while mag is supposed to me more of a team based game, thats why it has squads and shit. the author of the article should understand that what he has writen is just oppinion and shouldnt convince anyone which game is better. the things you dont like about mw2 are the things the rest of the world loves about it. now when BFBC2 comes out i would be interested in seeing a comparison between that and mag.

MAG is better if you're shit at shooters? With less auto aim assistance and bigger, more demanding maps and a far more complex set up all round I'd say that's the very last advantage you could argue it has over MW! I prefer MAG for two main reasons myself:1, it feels fairer(and also because MW/COD gives good/experienced players even MORE help and advantages over the newcomer which is just silly, imo, as if you're already pretty good at a pick up and play shootrer why would you want the challenge lessening unless you are a massive win baby?)without the twitchy aim and chewap perks and killstreak BS. And 2, it's just got a whole lot more for you to learn, mess around with and find your way of fitting into a team and as a result any successes feel, to me at least, more rewwarding and more like you and your mates earned them. The bigg problem with MAG is, imo, the odd perception people have of it. It's a squad shootrer in the extreme and going solo is pointless for you and your sqwuad but as a result fewer gamers will want to put in the extra effort:the asame as with TF2 and other squad based games it's a niche title yet has been reviewed/talked of as a direct cocmpetitor with MW2 or MoH et al and it never was going to be. It's getting better all the time, they did an amazing technical job and complaining that it doesn't look like KZ2 *(when itr's conquered lag in a 256 game better than MW2 has with tiny sides is a trechnical feat that shouldn't be sneered at)is plain silliness to me. When MW2 or even BFBC2 don't look great online I also don't see the point in thinking MAG could ever look as amazing as some SP games. Whatever, in short people put daft expectations onto KMAG for whatever reason and even though most knew they didn't like team based multiplayer before somehow managed to blame MAG and Zipper for this not changing that or making them suddenly appreciate a game with at least some learning curve beyond the first day or two! MAG rewards you farly and directly for the amount you put in and as a direct result of this feels more organic and more rewarding when and as you improve as a player but a lot of people bashed it because they either misunderstood it's aims or oddly expected it to suit them even when other team shooters had never been trheir cup of tea(there's a reason why TF2 and SOCOM nebver outsold COD or Halo you know and it isn't that the games are "inferior" but more because they're a more acquired and limited taste. Thennyou had gamers who seem to expect EVERY game to be for them, that can't accept that, just mayube, a particular game might not be the one for thm because it's DIFFERENT to the ones they always/usually like to play. Suddenly it was MAG and Zipper's faults that their "broken" game didn't suit everyone n the worlds taste in what has always been a niche sub genre of shooter. Consider, also, how many mre normal COD aping shooters fail to set the world alight even when they actively try to chase these same gamers and it's not hard to see why some disliked their time with MAG-it's just alien to a great many of thoe who played the betas and not many ever want to learn on the scale MAG demands imn order for you to get anything much out of it. I think that in the good games MAG is a way more exciting and reewarding shooter to play online that anything else on consoles today and as the community proves it will only get better and better. At least GR waited a little to rreview it but, ewven so, think it will need another lok in six months when Impredict t will have come into it's own as a shooter-still not for everyone,but a gret, tactical, team based shooter that was never intended to be for everyone or sell like MW2.

Ha ha ha nice article. I chuckle every time i hear Bromance.

I don't own a PS3, and havn't played MAG. However, I can already say that I agree with you. The twitch gameplay of CoD gets incredibly repetitive, and although fun for a short time with friends is in no way something I enjoy on my own, its frustrating. I do however play Battlefield (Bad company, 2... whichever) alot due to its larger maps and therefore less reliance on reaction times, and more on planning beforehand. MAG is one of few reasons I could find for buying a PS3, just wish there were more to sway me. Lastly I do disagree on one point. You claim that CoD has a problem whereby people of a higher level have access to much stronger guns, this just isn't true. Alot of the 'beginner' weapons are perfectly capable of holding there own, infact some are even preferable to the later weapons.