Mace: The Dark Age

"Like most fighters on the N64, innovative, but screwing up in one category."

Remembering the days of the N64, this always came up as one of the game I really wish I had bought. Something about it just seemed to be really appealing. Maybe because it was one of the first fighters in awhile I played where everyone had their own fighting style (take that, Mortal Kombat). Maybe it was the interesting characters. Maybe it was because it was one of the first weapon-based fighters. Or, maybe it was just because it came out during my ''Blood rocks! Go violentness!'' period. Whatever the reason, I still have some great memories of it.

The graphics were among the best at the time. Backgrounds were large, crisp, and beautiful. Characters were some of the most detailed people available for a videogame. The polygon counts were exceptionally high, and the textures looked very good. Special effects were well done, especially with the fire blazing around in certain areas. And even with all this the game maintained a good, constant speed.

Character designs were also some of the best aspects of the game. I remember them quite well because of my extreme fondness of Lord Demos, a large knight in red armor who just looked amazing at the time. Whether your preference was giant axe-wielding executioners, knights, monks, samurais, or assassins, this game had it all. Their designs, while all obviously medieval and somewhat morbid, were very well-done. I really liked them alot. Also worth noting is that Mace: The Dark Ages was one of the first games to have a demonic fighter. The character Hell Knight was a demon from hell, very interestingly drawn and programmed into the game.

The story, while I don't remember it to well, was very involved. Every character had loads and loads of information on their bios for you to read about. History, fighting style, weapon, etc. The main plot was to take the sacred Mace from the final boss and win the game. There may be more than meets the eye, but I never played through the single player too much, so I can't really say.

The gameplay was very innovative for the time. It was one of the first ever 3d weapon-based fighters. If you play it, then play Soul Calibur, you'll notice some astonishing similarities. Both have an easy-to-pick-up feel to them, but you can tell that there still is real depth.

Every character has their own weapon and their own style, as well as their own stats. But, they did a good job of making the game balanced. A strong character is likely to have very low speed and reaction time, while a weak character will more than likely be extremely fast. The battles become very fun slugfests when you pair up two strong guys (Executioner vs. Lord Demos is an instant battle classic), and good matches of skill with faster characters. While it seems like nothing but combos or strong moves, it's still more than anything about timing, like Street Fighter II. Also like Street Fighter II, characters have their own projectiles. In many respects this really does seem like a pure hybrid of Mortal Kombat and SF2.

One of the big innovations no one seems to remember is the backgrounds. If you were knocked out of the ring you did not die, but instead you still took damage until you got back in the ring. In some levels if you were knocked out, you fell into a pool of lava. Each level had their own out of the ring penalties. This I think actually works better than modern fighters. I hate it when I lose in Soul Calibur or Virtua Fighter 4 because someone decides to be cheap at the last minute to compensate for the fact that I'm beating them, and thus I'm tripped or juggled out of the ring. Here you still lose life, but the loss isn't an all or nothing loss. And if nothing else, nothing is more fun than having a quick death match by intentionally fighting inside lava.

So what's the only problem wrong with it? Control! Let me be the first to say that the control in this is a living hell. I played it for much more than a week and even though I eventually got used to it, the controls are not very well designed. The biggest problem is they don't feel natural. In a good fighter how you perform an attack seems logical. It makes sense. I do a roundhouse kick using the back leg and spin in a counter-clockwise motion. So to do Ryu's tornado kick, I should do a quarter circle back and kick! But here it doesn't seem like that. They don't stay consistent. Some moves require only A and B, some require only C buttons, and others require both, which is seriously a pain to mash your thumb into during a battle. Unfortunately, this is the only real problem with the game, but its score gets hurt significantly with it.

Sound and Music are good and fitting. The clashing of the weapons sounds very real, and the tunes are well done. Every area has either a morbid medieval or peaceful feudal sound to it. Very good, very appropriate.

You'll be playing this for a while, since the multiplayer is so very fun. There are some characters to unlock, so if nothing else you can have something to do over the rental.

Overall, despite its control problems it’s still a very good, very innovative game. No one ever gives it credit for its innovations because no one ever played it. But if they did, they would see a well-done game simply needing a tad of sprucing-up to make a five star game. I still don't own it to this day, but every time I go to a used videogame store I still check for it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/04/03