The 5 Most Dangerous Games of 2009

MAG: Massive Action Game

Key Innovations In MAG

  • 1. Big Damn Battles: MAG's 256-player battles, if truly realized, will be nothing short of epic. On current consoles, the most we've seen in a shooter is Frontlines' 50-player brouhahas. Even most PC games of note keep the soldier count low, with only the Battlefield franchise topping 60. If the game can ably convey the scope of a battle featuring 256 people fighting it out, it will be a sight to behold.
  • 2. Your Unit's Duty: You can read more about it in the other sidebar, but it really is surprising that more games don't follow MAG's simple battleplan. A 128-on-128 firefight would be too chaotic, but breaking the battle into different contingents with different objectives should hopefully make MAG much more manageable. At the very least, it should serve as food for thought for other developers.

The first info for MAG dropped last year and the game quickly became one of the crowning jewels of Sony's upcoming title lineup. The team that made SOCOM one of the PS2's most well-received franchises made a pretty weighty promise to trigger-happy gamers -- battles featuring 256 players, all on the battlefield at the same time. After gamers collectively picked their jaws back up, they've tried to scour for new information on the title, failing more than not. But GamePro has collected a few neat new tidbits as well as some concept art that just might shed more light on the biggest console battle ever created!

Making the Battle Bigger

You don't just go and plop 256 people onto a battlefield and yell "fire!" and nobody knows that more than Zipper Interactive. Speaking to the company, who had to "create a system of technology, gameplay, and aesthetics" to support such an endeavor, you get the feeling that this project will be every bit as groundbreaking in its depth as SOCOM was when it debuted.



One of the most important additions is that of "dynamic objective systems." With the battles broken up into fights between smaller factions, different groups of eight will be assigned different objectives that will work towards a larger victory for the team's side. While we weren't given specifics, we can imagine that teams could be assigned to overtake different parts of a compound, or that one team takes out communications while another team attempts an assault shortly afterwards.

On the design side, Zipper has had to create "levels that support high player numbers while still allowing for a personal battle experience." We've been provided with two concept designs of what we believe will be indicative of what they're trying to create. Both artistic interpretations show base camps -- one city-based and well-laid out, while the other is more haphazardly set up in a wild environment. Both look like they have a very high level of intricacy and could allow combat to play out in a number of ways, which should endear them to players on an individual level as well as larger groups.



Massively Anticipated

Zipper has provided a few other details to GamePro back in our April issue, but we'll recount the bigger revelations here. The game will largely consist of eight-on-eight battles alongside a larger backdrop of a larger war being fought on the same stage -- actions completed by different groups will make a difference for everyone, as you might see smoke billowing behind you as your bunkers get assaulted or planes flying overhead as a sister squad calls an airstrike. The team has been able to make use of many of the PS3's strengths, allowing the Cell Processor to increase graphical performance, the Blu-ray format to fit more audio samples, and the hard drive to stream the large levels without trouble. We've even heard that some of the technology put to work in MAG could be "a benefit to refining offline play."

The size of the battles in MAG: Massive Action Game only matches our hunger for new info. Keep your eyes on GamePro as we seek it.



Mother of Invention: The developers divulge their inspiration.

"Zipper's always been a company with strong online technological roots. In setting out to create a new IP for the PlayStation 3, we wanted to do something uniquely innovative on the tech front, but also something that could be leveraged for a very different play experience. The concept of creating a shooter of MAG's scale came from looking at the next logical step, albeit a big one, in multiplayer gaming. Real wars aren't simply two sides trying to tackle a single objective. This is the experience most current generation of shooters support. Real wars involve many units, each with its own set of objectives, where each objective must be accomplished to win an overall victory. With 256-player battles, we are striving to replicate this feel -- many individual squads, each with unique goals, all of which must work together to claim victory. As each smaller battle plays out differently, we see a great amount of variance in play from game to game. The replay value is high, the gameplay is deep yet approachable, and the experience is like nothing we've seen before."

-- Andy Beaudoin, lead designer at Zipper

Comments [21]

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Mr_ChickenWings

These all seem pretty great especially want to play M.A.G. and Dark Void. Well i want to play all of them. I hope i hear more about these games and can't wait for them to come out.

autarch_77

um...where is bioshock 2? and what is Bakugon again?
"The most...dangerous...games..." yeah that's what it says alright.

BlackMidget8

Dark Void looks great. But lets not pretend this kind of combat hasnt been done before. I hate to break this to everybody. But Tribes has been doing the kind of similar combat for like ten years now.

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