When we first heard about MGBH and its description we had great hopes of a top first person shooter game engine with an Elite-style space combat (and maybe even trading/pirating) game tacked on. What we've got is both more and less than that. The shooter engine is excellent, giving you visuals that better anything on PS2 so far, and a nice selection of weapons with meaty effects and varied, expansive levels to use them in. The AI of the enemies varies hugely; sometimes they'll hunt you down in menacing formations and scare the crap out of you, and they'll even back off and take cover if wounded, and then you'll walk onto the next section and there'll be a dummy just standing there who allows you to shoot his mates and him in the earhole without batting an eyelid…

The ship-based bits are another thing altogether. There's always a large flight envelope around the destination base (usually carved out of an asteroid) or ship, but all you do is fly straight there or shoot all the bad guys and then dock. Again you get some really spectacular visuals but there's so much going on at times that the PS2 can't handle it and the frame rate drops substantially - with the joypad vibrating like a jackhammer every time you get hit (or even change speed or direction) it means that just aiming is sometimes difficult (you do get guided missiles but they take an annoying 7 seconds to lock-on and there are never enough of them), and the one type of laser that aim-assists is wimpy and take ages to destroy an enemy ship. Your ship also has a cargo bay, but do you ever get to put anything in it? (Nope). The whole space side of the game feels like a wasted opportunity to supply gamers with something much grander.

   

Mace is a cool game but rarely less than taxing to play - we found it to be way too difficult for most and difficult to get in to, and the hackneyed plot (betrayal/retribution/alien/hybrids/corporations/conspiracy etc. etc. yawn) and the predictable, repetitive finale does it no service. But the gunplay is excellent and the action sufficiently varied to please just about everyone (if you're prepared to work at it). Throughout the entire game Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter is uncompromisingly plot-driven and fails to fulfil its early promise, and a few glitches spoil the gloss, but the simple fact that I'm reviewing a PS2 version is no mean achievement in my opinion, and hopefully Mace Griffin 2 will put the wrong things right.