Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter Demo

Space simulators are a one-of-a-kind breed of video games, since they can be pretty difficult to pull off properly and provide the target audience with the desired experience. However, titles like Freespace, Freelancer and even Eve Online have managed to fill in this need, while countless others have come pretty close to it over the years.

Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunters takes a stab at it from a different angle, by adding a taste of first-person shooter mechanics and thus making the entire experience unique. In essence, what this means is that you get to fly spaceships and fire lasers, but also get up from the cockpit and roam about in the cabin, looking out the adjacent windows and admiring the hyperspace drive from a slightly different perspective.

The story is not exactly amazing or revolutionary in any way, but it does hold the potential to keep you interested until the end, especially if you are into science fiction and you do not mind a few crazy ideas flying around. Thus, the action takes place at the end of the visible universe, in an alternate history no less, where corruption and crime are rampart. You play the role of Mace Griffin, who happens to be a bounty hunter when he stumbles into a massive conspiracy.

When it comes to actually flying the spaceships, things go pretty smoothly and you should have no trouble figuring out how to take full advantage of their capabilities. Moving around is quite simple, albeit a little disorienting due to the lack of a reference frame most of the time, although the radar can definitely help with that. Shooting is equally simple, since one mouse button is used for firing the laser gun, while the other shoots rockets.

From a technical point of view, the designers did a good job at portraying space, with plenty of asteroids, planets, stars and various other celestial bodies decorating the massive emptiness. Visually, the landscapes are quite good looking and eye-catchy, especially during intense dogfights. Moreover, the voice of the main character is provided by the legendary Henry Rollins, which certainly helps a lot with the atmosphere.

Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter is not exactly a jewel of the genre, but it does come pretty close to it in some regards. The first-person shooter sequences can be a bit boring at times, while the dogfights tend to get repetitive after a while. However, if you only experience the game in short bursts, it can be the perfect way of having some fun in space.