Hands-onMace Griffin Bounty Hunter

Crave stopped by today with an early build of Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter. In development at Warthog Entertainment for nearly two years, the game is set hundreds of years in the future. You assume the role of Mace Griffin, the only surviving member of an elite group of peacekeepers known as the Rangers who were brought down by a mysterious traitor. Following some time in prison after being framed for the death of his fellow rangers, Mace is freed and becomes a bounty hunter. The career choice affords Mace access to information that will prove useful in tracking down whoever framed him.

The build Crave brought by was very early but still let us get a taste of the gameplay styles available in the game. The demo opened up with a space sequence that showcased Warthog's highly impressive Tusk graphics engine, which can create fairly seamless transitions from spaceflight sequences to first-person perspective gameplay. We were able to pilot Mace's craft, which is one of seven you'll use over the course of the game, around a much larger craft. The cockpit view and handling of the craft definitely called to mind the feel of Warthog's respected Colony Wars games on the PlayStation. The control was solid and the layout felt comfortable. A touch of a button switched the game's perspective from the cockpit view to a first-person view from Mace's perspective, allowing us to explore the interior of Mace's ship. After a brief tour of Mace's ship, we resumed piloting the ship and docked with the larger craft.

The interior of the craft was populated with a variety of weapons, and there were a few enemies to try them out on. In addition to the basic handgun and electric prod Griffin starts out with, we were able to check out a few more of the weapons in his arsenal. A four-barreled shotgun, a plasma gun, a rocket launcher, and a machine gun with a grenade launcher attached are some of the weapons you'll encounter in the game. Each weapon will offer both primary and secondary fire modes. The enemies we encountered were still very early in terms of their AI behavior, but we were able to check out their scripted moves and animations.

Graphically, the game is looking quite nice, featuring all the Xbox eye-candy features you'd expect in a post-Halo first-person shooter such as bump mapping and pixel shaders. The environments are huge and detailed, and the feature extremely clean textures. In addition to the interior of the ship, were able to check out a temple that featured nice shading effects on its rocklike walls The game already featured some nice touches in the form of unique reloading animation for each weapon, marks on the environment from gunfire, and the beginnings of dynamic lighting effects. Despite the eye candy on display, the game maintained a high frame rate, and reps from Crave were confident that the final game will maintain a constant 60fps frame rate.

So far, the game is coming along quite well, and it definitely looks quite promising. The game is currently slated to ship this fall. Look for more on Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter in the coming months.