Jailhouse rock
In the future, rapid colonization by humans and aliens has led to the need for several Special Forces units to be established. The top Special Forces unit is known as the Rangers. Mace Griffin was once a part of the Rangers, but on a seemingly routine mission, Mace's unit was eliminated, and the blame was pinned on him, despite his plea that wormholes and aliens were involved in their demise. After 10 years in prison, Mace becomes a bounty hunter, and starts his search for the truth and the people who framed him.
Mace Griffin: Boredom Inducer
We did a preview of Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter back in April of this year, where the game looked to be coming along well. Unfortunately, it looks as if Warthog didn't put any more work into the title, and have delivered a boring, generic first person shooter which doesn't make the most of it's opportunities. An integration of first person shooter ground combat and space combat was something we'd been longing to see for a long time.
There are many factors that contribute to Mace Griffin being a dull experience. First off, the game follows the standard first person shooter model to a T. You're given an objective, you run through hordes of intellectually challenged enemies on a very linear path, hit a bunch of switches, and move onto the next objective. Second is the cloning of Halo's shield system. While it's not an entirely bad idea, it does result in a lot of hanging back waiting for your shield to recharge before you make another attack run. The AI is also very problematic; in some cases, it's quite intelligent, but in other cases you'll find enemies standing around waiting to be riddled with bullets, not so much as acknowledging your presence. Finally, there are just points during the game where you are required to perform tasks which could easily have been covered by a cut scene, such as landing your ship when there are no enemies around.
Mace Griffin doesn't really do enough with the features it has promised to deliver for the past two years. The on foot portions of the game are essentially a point and shoot affair with the traditional weapons (pistols, shotguns, machine guns), while the heavily underutilized space shooter segments of the game feel like a tacked-on novelty. The transition between ground and space isn't as seamless as Vivendi's PR unit would have you believe - little loading screens here and there. Combat itself feels like a very simplified version of Star Wars Starfighter, but not quite as solid. The best thing about the space combat is the ability to leave the cockpit and walk around the ship while flying around in space, but unfortunately, there's absolutely no purpose to this at all. A good idea would have been to be able to leave the controls on auto pilot, and run down to a turret in another part of your ship (developers, feel free to use this idea).
An unfortunate oversight on behalf of Warthog is the lack of multiplayer in Mace Griffin, so you'll have to rely on the single player to provide all the action in this one, and we don't think it does a good job of being anything but dull and generic. The main quest has 13 missions, and takes about 10-12 hours to complete, but once you're done, you probably won't go back. The other unfortunate oversight is that there are still some minor bugs left in the game, mainly in regards to the saving and loading system, where you may take 4-5 attempts at getting the game to load before it works properly.
I like shiny things
One could probably say that some first person shooter developers always have their priorities muddled up when making games, as a lot of shooters are usually cases of graphics over gameplay. The trend continues in Mace Griffin. There are some excellent effects, such as real time lighting on the guns, and all the usual shadowing and lighting in the environments. Animations for reloading are also very extensive, and we've finally seen a return to the much loved "gibbing" of enemies who get too close to explosions. It's not all good though. Enemies largely have a similar look to them, with only minor differences allowing you to distinguish between the various types. Enemy design is very similar to things we've seen in other games over the years. Mace and the other main characters look like they've been ripped out of various Sci-Fi action flicks. Some effects such as explosions look really silly, and are not always executed correctly. Mace Griffin lacks the ability to keep the frame rate steady through the entire game. While the game runs at 60 frames per second for the most part, the action can go below 30 at certain points in the game.
Henry Rollins, former leading man of Black Flagg and accomplished spoke word artist, provides the voice for Mace Griffin. Unfortunately, the dialog doesn't do anything to help the rocker's role, so the voice over comes across as being flat, something that doesn't help an already dire story. The musical score, while ramping up in action sequences, isn't too different from anything we've heard before. Sound effects are pleasing for the most part (excusing that headache inducing one in the second mission), but lack a certain amount of oomph that's required in this genre.
Just short of being average
Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter is an example of what happens when a good concept is intertwined with dull gameplay. Warthog should focus their energies on mastering the gameplay element of their future productions, rather than just making them look good. A below average, dull and ultimately forgettable first person shooter than could have been much more.
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