Parents' Guide to MAG

While this ambitious online-only shooter suffers from a few technical kinks, action fans with a penchant for multiplayer mayhem should be happy with this much-hyped war game. After choosing a side and playing through a brief tutorial, you can join one of the missions and chat with teammates using an optional headset. "Sabotage," for example, supports up to 64 players and your task is to protect valuable data from the opposing force (or, if on the other side, steal this intel from the enemy). In "Domination," which supports up to 256 simultaneous players, you must fight to secure and hold eight targets.

Depending on how you want to play, you can sharpen your skills as an on-foot soldier by learning the terrain and finding the best places to fire your machine guns, sniper rifles, or toss grenades, or you can become the commander of your unit and assign orders. If you're good, you might work your way up to commandeering a 32-person platoon or 128-person army. Military shooter fans who prefer multiplayer matches over computer-controlled opponents should find MAG an ambitious but successful shoot-em-up that's easy to pick up but tough to put down.

Online interaction: MAG is an online-only game. There is no single-player component other than the tutorials. What separates this title from other military shooters is you can play with up to 256 players at once and work your way up to commandeering entire squads, platoons, and armies. Online interaction with others on your same team is fun (with or without a headset). If a headset is used, the language you might hear is unpredictable.