It snowed more than it has down this way for a long time over the last week or so, which meant I had to take a couple of days off from work. My car got completely iced up – even the locks, I couldn’t get my key in – and the roads were like an ice rink, there’s no way I’m risking it for the sake of work. Luckily, I found a great way to spend the time off. Once the house was thoroughly cleaned and tidied that is…
Games. Lots of games. Or more accurately, a lot of time spent playing them. First up was the Beta version of MAG for the PS3. The game’s been in closed beta for a long time, and last week was the developer’s chance to stress test it with a free download for anyone who wanted it. MAG stands for Massive Action Game in this case and is a 1st-Person shooter, but with one departure from the norm with its scale. Battles in MAG go up to 128 vs 128 based on huge maps, and I have to say, it does it pretty well. I wasn’t too sure what to expect, FPS games are everywhere now and for every decent one there’s a ton of average ones, but I’m impressed with this one. The teams are split into platoons, which are in turn split into squads of eight people. Each squad has a leader who can issue orders, and they in turn get their orders from the platoon leaders and so on. It’s a proper chain of command and works well.
Players have a fair amount of customisation options, and each loadout is customisable too, so it’s easy to make a few setups of snipers, heavies, medics, engineers etc. The levelling works well, although it feels like a bit of an uphill battle to start with. Once you hit level 10 (on the beta) at least, new game types are unlocked, and at 15 you get your first leadership qualifications. I was trying to remember what it reminds me of for ages, and I’ve realised now that it was Battlefield 1942/Vietnam/2 for the PC. It’s a decent game, I think I’ll definitely get the full thing once it’s released, but I can see it being one of those where you need to invest a lot of time to get the most out of. As a FPS it’s not spectacular, it doesn’t do anything new, but the marriage of RPG-style character progression and the sense of ‘team’ is brilliant.
On top of that I also managed to snag myself the first new game on release day since Modern Warfare 2 I think, and treated myself to Darksiders. I’ll confess I didn’t really know anything about it up until about a month ago, but my friend’s constant rambling and eulogising meant I took notice and got excited about it too. The first time I saw video of it I was pretty unimpressed, it just looked like any other generic hack’n’slash, and I had my fears about it right until I started playing. The premise this time is that as War (capital W, one of the Four Horsemen) you’re duped into thinking the final battle between Heaven and Hell has started, and start kicking-off on Earth. The long and short of it is that you piss off the powers that be (sorry, ‘The Council’) and get banished to Earth, sans powers, to put things right and find out what’s going on.
The game is gorgeous both aurally and to look at, and the presentation just ooozes (yeah, three ‘o’s) class and attention to detail. If I had to give it a label I think I’d go with God Of War meets Zelda. Free-flowing combat involving big blades and the softer parts of enemies is the order of the day, combined with proper, old-fashioned, Zelda-style dungeons. I say dungeons, but as anyone who’s played a Zelda game knows, it doesn’t necessarily mean dank, dripping stone walls underground. I’m about five hours in so far and I’m loving every minute. I love some of the stats it gives you, such as total amount of demon blood spilled so far measured in gallons – classy. If you like the brawling and slashing you get from something like God Of War or Devil May Cry, and the exploration-with-inevitable-boss-encounter style of the Zelda series, I can’t recommend it enough. There’s a teeny bit of screen-tear with the 360 version I have, which apparently isn’t present in the PS3 one, but it’s nothing like enough to detract from the game.