The first thing I noticed when I booted up the MAG Beta, was just how smoothly the whole thing ran. It might still be in the beta stages of development but it's already clear that they have a very solid foundation on which they are building this enormous experience. I connect to players almost instantly with very little lag or delay, and that's on my so-so wireless connection. I've had trouble with almost every online game except Rock Band, LBP was particularly troublesome (at least the last time played it) and even Uncharted 2 has been a tad sketchy at times.         

    So when approaching MAG my main concern was that it throw a whole bunch of network issues in my face, and things weren't looking good when it took me about an hour and a half to download an update. But alas, all my worries vanished as soon as I was connected. The other surprising thing is the level of polish, not only in the user interface and network, but the character models and environments themselves. I haven't really been paying much attention to MAG since it was announced, it sounded like a cool idea but it never really struck me as that exciting. I suppose I just assumed that to accommodate 256 players, they would be sacrificing the level of graphical fidelity and detail that I have come to expect from games of this generation.      

    That is not the case, the first thing you notice is that the game really doesn't look half bad, and this isn't even the finished product. As soon as you connect you are asked to select a character, cycling through the various head I could select I kept thinking how much better everything feels and looks compared to what I had imagined. The frame rate is smooth and the draw distance is great enough to have it feel like your part of something epic. The guns feel and sound incredible, firing off rounds is almost reminiscent of Black, and possibly even the beast that is Modern Warefare 2.     

    Before you do anything you must pick from 3 different PMC groups, who you choose to fight for will affect the look and feel of your user interface. You can then outfit your character with weapons and equipment, connect with friends who are also online, or just jump straight into a firefight. At the moment I am only allowed to access 2 game types, 'Objective' and 'Sabotage', this may be due to my low rank or the restrictions of the Beta, at the moment I'm unsure. Once you pick a game mode you are placed into a cue to join a game, the longest I had to wait in a cue was only around 15 seconds. After that you pick which squad you would like to be a part of and off you go.    
  
    For some reason I thought the whole thing would be a bit low budget, but it has definitely surpassed my expectations. I'll update you on how my experiences change as I play more. But at the moment I'm fairly impressed. It's definitely a rush spawning only to see a dozen of your player controlled comrades running along side you, it's a total "Fuck Yeah" moment, and one that doesn't happen all that often in games like this.    

Did you and I play the same game?  I just got through playing the beta and I was not as impressed.  
 
First of all the game did not seem to run smoothly at all.  The animations of other players around me were very clunky.  Instead of running I just saw other players sliding across the map. Second of all this game looks like shit.  Compared to other online shooters in the market (ahem...Modern Warfare 2) what I saw in the MAG beta looked generic in comparison.  Everything from the menus to the in game environments looked like something I would see in one of those free online multiplayer FPS games.  I understand this is a beta, but considering this is so close to release I thought it would better than what I played.
 
My time will be spent with Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 2.  In an already overly saturated market I don't think that MAG is good enough to compete.

" Did you and I play the same game?  I just got through playing the beta and I was not as impressed.    First of all the game did not seem to run smoothly at all.  The animations of other players around me were very clunky.  Instead of running I just saw other players sliding across the map. Second of all this game looks like shit.  Compared to other online shooters in the market (ahem...Modern Warfare 2) what I saw in the MAG beta looked generic in comparison.  Everything from the menus to the in game environments looked like something I would see in one of those free online multiplayer FPS games.  I understand this is a beta, but considering this is so close to release I thought it would better than what I played.  My time will be spent with Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 2.  In an already overly saturated market I don't think that MAG is good enough to compete. "

I played the beta too, about a month or two ago... It didn't really impress me that much so only played maybe 5 matches and put it down. I thought the hud display was a little busy and took too much of the screen and the graphics weren't all that impressive, hopefully the gameplay will make up for it. The largest match I was in was 25 people and it's still in beta so I'll probably rent before I buy.

" @xAbleAssassinx:  Isn't your thread brakes the conditionality you agreed upon when entering the beta? You might wanna read the user agreement page.  "

" @xAbleAssassinx:  Isn't your thread brakes the confidentiality you agreed upon when entering the beta? You might wanna read the user agreement page.  "

HAYLEY WILLIAMS!  
 
the beta wasn't really interesting to me after about 2 weeks. 256 players seems cool, but the gameplay didn't really interest me for long. there's something about it..  
 
 i haven't played the beta in about a month. if you want, we should play some time! 

Bare in mind these are EARLY impressions of an unfinished product. And for those who weren't impressed by what they saw in the Beta, I guess I just had lower expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Obviously it's not comparable to something like MW2, but it's not a bad looking game, especially given the size of the maps and the number of players it has to accommodate. Also the game definitely ran smoothly for me, overall I was impressed by whole polished the game felt even at this early level. I was expecting a super laggy, super glitchy mess, and that's not what I found, so I'm already thinking more highly of it than i expected to.  
 
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