User Rating: 8.3 | Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter XBOX
Mace Griffin is one of the better games in recent memory to come out for XBOX. Its big “hook” is that it seamlessly mixes space combat action and first person shooter action for a new twist: fly your spaceship into the area, take out fighters with guns and missiles, land on the base, get up out of your pilot seat, walk through the cabin of your spaceship, out the door, down the gangplank, and start taking out enemies on the ground. All without load screens. This is not to say that there are no load screens. The first person shooter levels are generally fairly large and the game does pause every so often to load more of the level. This also means that you generally can’t go backwards once you’ve reached one of these load points. And this is my one real gripe with the game. The Space Combat/Ground Combat hook is great and all, but why with scripted missions and levels? This format would have been so much cooler in an open-ended format like Freelancer/Elite/Privateer/[add your favorite open ended game here]. Having it be strictly mission based, linear, and very scripted kind of removes the novelty of the space/ground transition because the space combat is really just more of the same ground combat albeit in space. Since you can’t actually fly anywhere you want to, you’re simply limited to the local space area and the mission at hand. This greatly reduces any feeling of “Wow” that might be associated with the space/ground combat transition. However, this does not mean that Mace is a bad game. As console FPS’s go, I’d give it an 8.5 (with Halo obviously being the measuring stick). It’s definitely the second best FPS on the XBOX that I’ve come across and its single player gameplay blows Brute Force right out of the arena. If I were rating it strictly as an FPS it would get a very high rating. Unfortunately I find the space combat part to be more of a detraction than a bonus for the above cited reasons. It does add some variety to the missions but it does not really add a whole new level of gameplay. Now I can only pray that some game developer plays this game and thinks how cool it would be if it were translated to an open ended format…
