The year is 2025. The optimism and harmony of the 2010s were completely eradicated by 2020. A global crisis loomed. Food shortages sparked riots, currencies plummeted, fuel reserves dwindled, and oil-producing nations began to ration what remained. It is a dark future. Governments earmarked money for humanitarian efforts, overseas security, and intelligence services which, over time, found its way the coffers of a small group of Private Military Companies (PMCs). These three private armies (Valor, Raven, and S.V.E.R.) then began to recruit aggressively. Soldiers without a country, the contractors fight wars that never happened. This is the nature of the Shadow War.
 

 

MAG is a massive action game. The battlefields are just enormous, and so is the number of players in each game. Think Battlefield 1942, except very very next gen. After a couple days playing the beta, let me explain what really stuck out.

 

Customization: You can really customize your look. Depending on which faction you're playing for (by the way, I don't think you can change this unless you change your character... thus starting from square one) you get to choose face and voice, armor, helmets, and the works. Outside of battle you can set your "load outs." You can have more than three of these. When you are in battle, after dying, while waiting to spawn again, you can pick a different loadout to spawn with. Different loadouts just have different approaches, for example one loadout has Assault Rifle + Frag Grenade, while another one may have Sniper Rifle + Smoke Grenade. You can set it to whatever you want, really.
 

 

Progress: As I gained EXP in matches with the sniper rifle, I got 3 xp per hit, and 5 xp per kill. From a long distance with the sniper rifle, you will have to take into account the moving target considerably if you want to hit the head. Fire about 3-4 heads length in front of the head in the direction he's running. These shots are absurdly gratifying. After every round, your experience gained is totaled up and ranked. You have an experience points bar that fills up, and when it's full, you obtain a level and a skill point. Skill points can be spent on a MASSIVE skill tree, ranging from just about every upgrade you can think of. Some examples of things I saw on there are: Steadier sniper rifle aim, less time spent between sprinting, faster reloads on all types of weapons (the initial reload times from the get go are noticeably long, in my opinion), and more. There is also a built in clan system.