A high player count is the only big thing about this mediocre shooter
If any series is crowded, it's the FPS genre. Irregardless, this doesn't stop many developers trying to bring their spin on it; MAG is all about numbers. Once the appropriate rank is reached, players will be able to jump into matches with up to 255 other players making for the biggest online battlefield on the system. To MAG credit, I never experienced lag or frame rate dips during full scale matches.
Each game mode is objective based. You'll be able to rank up, unlock weapons, attachments, gadgets and even clothing for your soldier. A limited character creation at the start even allows you to pick your soldiers appearance and vocal chords. From here you'll join one of the 3 factions, Raven, S.V.E.R or Valor. Each faction has distinctively different weapon models and your choice will depend what role you play in each of the games maps.
Choose carefully however because when you pick your faction you won't be able to change it unless you either fully rank it up or delete it. It's fair to assume that the developers have designed it this way to encourage loyalty from players to their designated faction.
Once you create your character and get started the cracks quickly begin to show. First thing you'll notice is how bad the game looks and sounds. Textures are flat, gun and character models are poor and animations (especially reloads) belong in the last generation of hardware. Guns sound weak and explosions sound and look terrible – perhaps this is aimed more at realism but simply comes off as weak; instead of a fiery explosion you get a puff of smoke from a frag. Characters shouting orders and speaking their last words as they bleed out is laughably bad.
Guns do have recoil but lack any real weight or punch. Shooting an enemy sounds more like a BB gun shooting a bouncy castle. Stepping outside will quickly get you gunned down by one of the dozens of snipers in any given match so it's likely the average player will find themselves camping a single building the whole match in an effort to accumulate a decent score thus undermining the large scale the game is trying to portray. Given how overpowered later sniper rifles are, it's hard to blame people who want to use them.
MAG barely passes as a cheap downloadable game let alone a full retail release. It tries to play in the same field as Call of Duty and Battlefield but doesn't even touch the pedigree of those titles. If bad graphics, animations, sound, design and game play are necessary sacrifices to have 256 players in one match then this reviewer thinks it wasn't worth it.