Well it’s been seven days since we posted our MAG review. Not only were we the target for criticism but we were also accused of reviewing the beta. That, my friend, is a lie. The review was posted the day after the servers launched and the whole of the previous day, even into the early hours of the morning were dedicated to MAG. I believe I stopped playing at 2:30AM, and commenced playing at 11AM the day after release day, which continued until about 3PM when I sat down, weighed up my experience with the game and wrote the review. We here at MyInsideGamer strongly believe the MAG review is intact, solid and correct.
However, some of the comments suggested we didn’t get the full experience of the game, and that we should have played for a lot longer than the timeframe we did. Since we dedicate a certain amount of time to review games, we will not go over that limit simply because of the nature of a certain game, and along with that we will not change the score of a game. If we get something to review, we review what we get – simple. So yes, our review is still alive and well, untarnished and intact over here.
We didn’t just fog off the comments either; they’re there for a reason, right? We have decided to publish an article that (at the time of writing) is exactly seven days after entering the battlefield that is MAG for the first time. Has anything changed much? Yeah, it has – I will admit that leaving the review to a later date would have gave me more insight into the review but I’m not sure if the game would have appealed to me more.
MAG is a game that will grow on you. Unlike FPS games like Modern Warfare 2, you can’t just jump in and love it. And even like Haze, you can’t just hate it either – it is a unique type of game. Deciphering it is part of the experience before you can begin to really understand it and if I deciphered the game before I reviewed it is a question I can’t honestly answer simply because it makes no difference whatsoever.
So what does this article even matter? Well for one, I’ve managed to play a lot more games in, Domination (which I played before reviewing) and a bunch of others (Domination is by far the best). I levelled up and became attached. I became a leader in a few games and I even had a few games where I had a solid team working together and in the rare cases, the opposing team were like that as well. More of my friends bought the game, so we put on headsets and worked excellently together to make MAG one of the best FPS experiences I’ve ever had – but I stress, this is a very rare experience.
So, what have I experienced over the past five days that I didn’t in the two days during the review period? I got better, which is a big plus. I always like to hone my skills to a new game, and MAG was an important one. Migrating from other FPS games to MAG is awkward. Sure, it takes ideas from other games and implements them nicely but the “warming” period as I like to call it, where I “warm” to a game can be stressful. This is where MAG comes in handy. The game does have a learning curve, but you don’t have to die repeatedly to grasp it. It’s a nice and enjoyable experience that I never really get to enjoy. I believe Unreal Tournament 3 was the last time I truly enjoyed adapting to a new game.
So, has MAG won me over since the review? Well technically yes, because a ton of new features became evident but does this require a new review score? I’m going to say no on a very simple basis:
Whilst some new things developed, some already bad things that were there from the get-go grew bigger. The more people bought the game, the more mindless idiots were running around and not cooperating. If Sony pulled MAG from the shelf on day two, and left the launch day buyers to play for a week on their own, this could have been something spectacular and whilst I realize doing such an action is unrealistic and fake, there will constantly be new players joining the MAG community and acting like retards with bullets.
Have I discovered some new positives? Yes. Have the negatives subsided? No, quite the opposite, which leads me to my final verdict after a week of playing: Yes, MAG gets better but not enough to warrant a new review score.
Our review score if 7.4 is still very much reflective of the game, as brownie points were awarded to the silent features this game expresses. So, a week later, how does this shooter fair out? It develops into something different by growing on the positives as well as the negatives. A better experience in some ways though, I must say.
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