M.A.G is an upcoming PS3  exclusive which is expected to arrive January 26, 2010.  Now despite how the game is yet to be released I did happen to get in on the beta which is highly impressive. MAG is going to be the first game of its kind (that I know of) which falls into the genre of MMOFPS (massively multilayer on-line first person shooter).

So typically the MMO genre applies to PC games such as World of Warcraft, and Aion. With lots and lots of people (pretty sure WoW is up to about 10 million as of Jan 22,2008). MAG on the other hand is a 256 person on-line game which is extremely high for a normal console FPS.

According to developers the game dose not contain any soundtrack to produce any of the battle noises. All of the noises are said to be made by the surrounding battles and so all of the noises you hear in the game are user created. Along with the amazing idea with the sound the graphics were not sub par and the game played EXTREMELY smooth and despite the not so great Playstation Network there was no lag in the times that I played. The game modes that were in the beta seemed to resemble those of typical first person shooters aka team deathmatch capture and hold and attack and defend.  The game uses an RPG style when leveling such as you earn skill points when levels are gained to add to your character to make him more proficient in something or unlock new weapons. All of the weapons have additions that can be added to them such as stocks, silencers and sights. And finally the thing that appealed to me the most which is something actually very petty is the control scheme. MAG uses a very simple control scheme that is very very generic for an FPS. This is good because its almost  as if you have played an FPS before you can just pick this game up and play, no learning controls or anything ; all is kept very simple.

MAG comes out on January 26, 2010 in North America and is an exclusive for the Playstation 3

Borderlands is an FPSRPG (First person shooter role playing game) which focuses a characters story in quest for the “vault’. First off the character selection in the game is between four different characters or more accurately described as classes. You can choose to be Mordecai a “hunter” who is proclaimed to be proficient in snipers and revolvers; Roland the “soldier” class who is proficient in assault rifles and shotguns;  Brick whom is the “tank” class and is proficent with explosives; and finially Lilith who is pretty much the mage class. Now as all the characters have proclaimed proficiency’s any character can use any gun and become proficient with it.

This game is made by Gearbox who actually made a specific engine to generate guns. This makes the estimated number of 17750000 possible guns actually, well, possible.  The text in which the guns are written in are all colored designating rarity; such as in order from very common to very rare white, blue, purple, yellow, orange, dark orange. Guns can also have different elemental effects added onto them such as explosive, fire, corrosive,and electrical. All of the elemental effects have added benefits against certain enemies (fire burning flesh, shock destroying shields, corrosive against armor,and explosive  is kind of self explanatory)

So now for my personal review. I am currently on my first play through with Mordecai (lvl21) and so far I love the game. The graphics look beautiful and the style used was somewhat original which made it all the better.  The game uses a leveling system much like most RPG’s you kill things you get  exp, you do quests you get exp every level you ding it takes more exp to hit the next level along with adding to your total health. The game is said to have a level 50 cap which I was skeptical about at first seeming low and worrieng about hitting the cap before reaching the end of the game coughfallout3. This is totally prevented by  Gearbox making it so you have to play through the whole game then having to do a second play though to actually hit 50 (aka adding replay value). Everything in this game looks and works perfect and well is just fantastic. Now for the down sides. In the game you can get one just one vehicle with two different weapon attachment options (rockets and machine gun).You can use a lock on feature for both and the machine gun is terrible in every way. I found this to be kind of lame do the the ridiculous amounts of guns that are in the game that no one person can possess they could have added one or two more different types of vehicles. The driving mechanics are awful enough said. And although we have not totally tested this out yet I seem to not be able to get critical hits on targets really far away(not necessarily a bad thing but just annoying).

Over all the game is amazing easily a 9 out of 10. The expansion “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned” is due to be out very son and will cost about $10.  Game is amazing and would recommend 110%

It is available on all systems (PS3, Xbox360, And PC) and is rated M for mature.

This week I got to play around with FPS Creator X10. This is pretty much a program that allows you to make your own FPS. Everything in this program when you are creating your game is all drag and drop and after watching the tutorials it is an extremely simple program to use. There are plenty of mods and added model packs for you to keep everything updated. One of the best parts of this program is that you can use your maps as multilayer maps so you can lan. Now despite the simplicity of the drag and drop in the level creation you do have to set and assign actions to the NPC’s(non-playable characters), and environmentals such as doors and keys, confusing at first but easy once you work at it for a few hours. Other than that its an awesome program that’s simple and fun to play around with. Oh and if the standard T ESRB rating for the in-game content is not good enough for you there is a patch that will boost the rating up to M. So i recommend checking this out if you get a chance and enjoy the first directx 10 game creator for vista. www.fpscreatorx10.com