This is not a blog about MAG. This is not an attempt to recruit C420 members to come play MAG – even though I would love it if you did! (Rumor has it that AnubisIIGoW is picking up his copy this weekend.)

This is a blog about Zipper & the absolutely amazing job they did producing MAG. Zipper has knocked it out of the park. I cannot believe how much better the gameplay & interfaces of MAG are than the Slant 6 version of SOCOM. There is no comparison.

I never played SOCOM 1 or 2 from Zipper, but I’ve heard they were great. Obviously they created a huge following. I’m not going to whine about Slant 6 but I am going to compare.

Now, I know that SOCOM requires a different lobby system than MAG does. In MAG you cannot join a lobby & set up your opponents, switch sides, & play against your friends. You can only join a group of 8 friends and play with those 8 as teammates. Your opponents are always chosen for you.

Nonetheless, I hope & pray that Zipper can take what they’ve done with MAG & apply it to the next SOCOM (which they are already working on).

Imagine pressing a button on any of the menus (community, armory, friends list, stats, extras) and not having to wait for between 1 & 5 seconds while it pauses to load. The screen loads instantly!

Imagine being able to go into any home screen menu while you are still in the game lobby. You never have to ‘leave’ your party & you can still talk to them while you are playing with your other stuff.

Imagine playing 16 versus 16 on large maps (or even up to 256 in this case) with NO LAG. You never get shot after you’ve already killed someone. You never see people jumping around. Wow what a concept!

All Zipper needs to do is apply their top-notch technology & programming to the SOCOM concept. Personally I hope they scrap the existing lobby system that is in Confrontation, which is straight off the short bus. Australasia, I never want to see you again!

Instead just used the MAG basic concept & expand! Perhaps make the party system be able to hold 32 players instead of 8. Then make it closed mike. Then add an option for ‘closed’ (unranked) or ‘open’ (ranked) game type. Then launch! That’s it! The party leader selects the game type & the party is off!

Come on Zipper, I know you can do it