MAG

That mysterious PS3 glitch that kept consoles shut down worldwide is fixed. You have the green light to power up.

I'm a big fan of proactive patching. A developer must fix what's obviously broken. They help their game even more by tweaking things that ain't broke but can be improved.

That's what Zipper's doing with the MAG patch 1.02 (which is automatically installing February 17, 2010 at 1am Pacific/ 4am Eastern/ 9am GMT). The team is taking a solid crack at improving the med support in MAG.

Jack Tretton, the suit that runs Sony America, just posted his year-end review, "Thank You For A Great 2009." We'll overlook the fact Jack that 2009 ended a almost 6 weeks ago because of the good news included about MAG.

"Over half a million of you have already chosen your allegiance in MAG, and have played over 270,000 games in the Shadow War," he says.

One of the most frequent gripes since the release of MAG relates to faction balancing. We can't count the number of times we've heard pleas SVER is overpowered.

Well, you're cries for help have been answered. Zipper is making changes to the faction strengths that will affection the game "quite noticeably."

Here's something that will come in handy this week when you're stuck at work/school/juvenile detention and get the sudden urge to tweak your MAG character loadouts. Best of all, it will look completely legit since it involves Excel.

Over on the official MAG forums Valhades and its girlfriend put together a loadout simulator spreadsheet. It's a nifty tool that lets you quickly test out different weapon, armor and accessory combos.

Um, hi im new here. I dont actually own MAG yet. But im renting it within the week and plan on buying it. And just so i can get in the action as soon as possible. Um, what faction has the least amount of players/has been losing the most? Because id be glad to help the faction. From what ive been reading here its sure not SVER lol.

Thnx, and add me as a friend on PSN. My name on there is sergeantmonty16.

MAG is outselling that gaming behemoth known as Modern Warfare 2 in the U.K. Chart Track released their UK PS3 game charts today for the week ending January 30th and MAG sits atop (chart below). Magnificent.

The MAG reviews are piling up and they are pretty favorable. I think at times they nit pick too much but I might be slightly biased for the game (I edit a site called MAG Game Guide, if you didn't know).

My key takeaway though is that almost all the reviewers are sold on the game's potential. Almost unanimously they agree, this game is doing something different and is going about it in the right away. That ain't easy.

Give credit where credit is due. The Battlefield series was a pioneer in large online FPS multiplayer battles. It's been around since 2002 with Battlefield 1942 and has made some kick-ass games since.

But there's one thing they never did: create a game that supported 256-player battles. It's a mind-boggling task when you consider the technological and organizational infrastructure that are needed to allow that to happen.

I've got to admit, I groaned when I first saw that Destructoid posted their review of MAG. Since this is an online-only game they couldn't have possibly played the final version. They must be basing it on the beta, which had its problems that should--fingers crossed--be ironed out for tomorrow's release.