Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter Review

Star Wars + Halo equals one great game. Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter has the best of two sci-fi worlds. You get the array of space ships that you pilot throughout the game and destroy fighters before you have to dock at the space stations. You battle different alien races and go to different places in the distant future. Obviously, you are Mace Griffin, a former ranger (a type of police force kind of), who was set up by your fellow team-mates and spent the next ten years of your life in jail. You meet this guy who teaches you the way of bounty hunting. Once you get out, the rangers have dispersed and the Guild of Bounty Hunter is the new law in a way. Semi-regulated by the government, they do what they are asked by the man in charge, Moscone, and defend and protect the innocent. You are Mace Griffin, you are a bounty hunter.

The graphics on MG: BH are pretty well done. There is bump-mapping everywhere that you look, on spaceships, on people, on guns, etc. The enemies however all look similar. You see about 6 different types of enemies throughout the entire game. They look good, but you think that the same people are coming back to life from the last level trying to get you back. The space doesn’t look nearly as good as most of the Star Wars games do (e.g. Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader ) , even though there are planets, stars, other galaxies, asteroids, it doesn’t look nearly as good. The graphics are still solid and are just above the Xbox minimum standards.

The game sounds good in Mace Griffin, especially the guns. If you fired a weapon like the ones in the game, it would sound exactly the same. Engines roar to life when you hop into the cockpit of a spaceship and fly to the next area or to battle enemy fighters. Lasers sound exactly the same as they would in the Star Wars universe. They could have made it sound different, but it doesn’t sound bad though. The voice acting is only well done with Mace Griffin. They found the perfect match that fits his personality. You could really believe that he would really sound like that. Everything else in the voice acting department is weak, at least key characters should sound good, but they don’t. They should have put more time looking for better matches for these characters as they did for Griffin, the game’s sound could have been a heck of a lot better.

MG: BH plays like your basic FPS. As all games now in this genre, it has the Halo-style control scheme that makes players seem right at home. Mace Griffin doesn’t have any other difficulties how ever. It is a tough game to complete because in some levels, it requires some problem solving skills to figure it out. This game craves for multiplayer action and XBL play. This feature is conspicuously absent however. A FPS without multiplayer action doesn’t sound right does it? Flying is easy to master; simply learn how to control your speed when in combat and docking is critical, without this, you will not succeed. It has a good storyline involved with it, but if you don’t enjoy it or understand it, you will not enjoy the game since you won’t know why he’s doing all of this. It is good, maybe not as good as Halo’s was, but it is still good.

A solid FPS that is basically a cross between Star Wars and Halo. There is no multiplayer or online play that will keep people play it and it seems kind of like a rip off to some people. Bounty hunting is something that most people would expect from a Star Wars game along with the star fight battles. Battling alien scum doesn’t seem as fun as it does in Halo since the AI in Mace Griffin are completely retarded. You could sit there right next to them for a few seconds without them even noticing you. At least the Halo enemies saw you as you approached.

Overall, there are 10 different levels for you to play on. There is over 12 hours of game play and then you will never pick the game up again. With no multiplayer or XBL play, you will get tired of this game really fast. There are a bunch of different weapons to use, including a semi-automatic pistol, a mini-gun with a grenade launcher on it, a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher, a shotgun, and a plasma gun that is similar to the plasma pistol in Halo. There is also a radio wave gun that explodes enemies, grenades, and wall mines. It has a wide array of weapons to use, but it won’t keep bringing you back to play. If you want to get this game, rent it and beat it then since you will regret buying it later. It is beatable in about 2 days if you try. Only paying 6 bucks to play it for a week is too much. Maybe next time, if there even is a Mace Griffin 2, they will add the much needed features MG: BH craves. I highly doubt that we will see a sequel though.