Good ideas marred by frustrating, flawed execution
The first warning signs are apparent right after loading. The pros and cons of the faction that you pick is woefully undocumented. You can only pick a single faction per account, and there's no changing after the fact. Onscreen, everything is in this tiny font. I have no idea why they decided to clutter the screen with unnecessary graphics yet make the font so small.
The graphics are average and definitely don't push the PS3's capabilities. Textures are muddy and it's difficult to discern friend from foe. No idea why they decided to put tiny little icons on top of friendly troops – again with the font issue! Terrain isn't destructible.
Controls are a mess. They are also not configurable, other than switching to a few different layouts that only change one or two buttons. It really takes some time to relearn the exact same shooter controls that you've been using in every console FPS for the past 10 years. I just couldn't get used to it – I kept switching to my pistol instead of firing my weapon, and the process of switching to grenades / medic gun before "firing" is counter intuitive and only adds frustration to the game.
I could never find the sweet spot between movement and aiming precision. The analog sticks were either too sensitive or not sensitive enough.
Weapons lacked "punch". Between the muddy graphics and pop-pop sound effects, it was tough to figure out when you were hitting a target and when bullets were landing near you. Unfortunately, all the weapons are extremely lethal and feel imbalanced.
Gameplay was frustrating. Snipers dominate the maps, and it's very easy to run out of the base and get tagged immediately by someone who is spawn camping from half the map away. Grenade spam is a problem as well – they're over powered, can be thrown a ridiculous distance, and bounce around like ping pong balls when they hit a solid object or wall. The majority of my deaths came from something I never even came close to see coming – you're running towards something and poof, suddenly you're dead. Certain factions dominate certain maps due to their starting positions.
The much vaulted "massive multiplayer" aspect is for the most part a non issue. You're never fighting more than 8 or 10 other people at the same time, because there are various objectives and it's usually one squad against another. You may be in a map with 256 other players, but it's broken down into small squad level engagements, so unless you run for several minutes to a completely different part of the map, you'll be fighting the same enemies over and over again.
The level up system is a good incentive to keep playing, but experience points are hard to come by. Being part of the winning team doesn't offer the same rewards as in other games, which means you have to work pretty hard for your levels. It's aggravating to make no progress for minutes on end when you are being spawn camped.
Most games are a war of attrition. You run towards the objective, get a kill, get killed, watch your killer get killed, get resurrected, and repeat immediately. It's cyclic, uninspired gameplay – you spend more time running towards your objective than you do fighting around it. Other games (notably the Battlefield series) have done this type of game mode much better.
All in all, MAG is a disappointment. The genre needs a massively multiplayer game that encourages teamwork, but MAG is not it.