Geek Culture: Understanding MAG

Typically, this column doesn’t run reviews. Mostly because they feel like a cop out and it isn’t too interesting to write or read about how awesome “Kitten Puncher V: The Musical” is.

But games like “MAG” are different. This is a game that I have played for well over 20 hours, and yet I don’t understand. Mostly because, much like “Donnie Darko,” it’s hard to tell what’s intentionally stupid or accidentally stupid.

“MAG” is a multiplayer online shooter for the PS3 that will instantly feel familiar to anyone who’s played “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” one or two, with players earning experience points with kills and unlocking abilities or equipment with each level.

What sets “MAG” apart is the fact that you can play with 256 players online, which is insane when you realize that there are enough players on your team alone to start a conga line around the earth three times over.

You’ll immediately jump into the game after meticulously creating a soldier that ends up looking like every other square jawed grunt on your team, at which point you will run five feet and get shot by someone you had no chance of seeing.

If you’re like me, this will happen eight times. Occasionally while waiting to spawn the countdown clock will start at twenty, wind down, and then start all over again.

At one point I died and spent the last 10 minutes of the game staring at the clock, wondering what I was supposed to do in video game limbo.

Actually, scratch limbo. If there is a better idea for gamer hell than having a player stare at a clock while waiting to get back into a game after dieing embarrassingly for all eternity, then I’ve never heard it.

Even weirder once was when the clock got to zero and a message popped up telling me that “Aryan_Prince” killed me, with the clock then starting up again.

Apparently Aryan_Prince is so amazing that he killed me and the game didn’t even have enough time to respond. I felt strangely honored.

Other weird problems include dieing and then still being able to walk around the battlefield, finding your body in a strange pose after respawning and even occasionally the PS3 growing a leg and kicking you in the bean bag. I might have made that last one up.

Recently, however, a patch was released that fixed most of these problems. In their place the game now freezes a lot.

I don’t know how to describe how it feels to have a game freeze when you were 10 seconds away from winning a match and leveling up.

Let’s say you sit down to work on a paper for a class. It’s a midterm paper, and you made yourself a cup of coffee before you began.

You eventually make your to the end of it. It’s a great paper. You’re about to hit save and score an easy A when….

Your friend sticks his penis in your coffee.

That’s what it feels like MAG. That’s what it feels like.