Foreword:

I've given it some thought and I think it should be interesting to see what kind of reaction I get. This won't be regular by any means. This is just to test the waters so to speak. Naturally, the blog entry should be about something very easy to discuss and for me, that's Mace which I've poured tons of time lately and piling on Youtube videos.

MACE: The Dark Age from what I gather is a joint project between Atari and Midway back in 1995 (I reckon) to produce a weapon fighting game based in Medieval period. In other words, ride the coattails of Soul Edge's success, unsuccessfully, I might add. It's focus on wow-ing audiences with advanced graphics and immersive backdrops is one proposition I've heard of time and time again in the industry. Unfortunately for MACE, it was plagued with problems, inexcusable for a title that has spent approximately 2 years in the oven. I've spent quite a bit of time in MACE back in 97 and now almost a decade after its release I find myself going back to it and experiencing some fun again. I've then considered it interesting at least to outline what I feel were MACE's good points and bad points in the hope that people can understand the game better and perhaps learn something from this article.

I believe we can start with the character roster and analyze what the bloody hell Atari did. MACE featured quite a diverse list of characters all of which are fairly typical. Only a few characters were ever worth highlighting and the character designs were less than inspired. I've seen CGTak's (One of the 3D animators for MACE) website for some brief insider info on the developments which included preliminary character designs. Some of the character sketches looked like early designs of what would be included in the final product. What was kind of disappointing was that the more interesting sketches weren't pushed through. In the end you receive quite a bland list of characters.

To cite examples of blandness, in MACE you have a big burly barbarian, the mandatory ninjas, monks, samurais, skimpy clothed women, medieval knights and mercenaries... what the heck, throw in a monster or two. MACE's characters had a diverse list of character designs, all of which we've seen before and too few of them had any sort of personality at all. Takeshi is a Samurai that thought sticking spikes at the back of his armor made for good practical design. Taria is a sorceress who thinks armoured lingerie makes for good armours for females. Sir Dregan is an undead knight that features the usual bone build. Koyasha is a ninja, but thinks showing her skin can conceal her effectively. Apart from the usual cliche in designs, MACE had almost nothing memorable in its roster.

The moves of which we've all seen before made MACE hardly a game to be called revolutionary. It was evolutionary which was pretty okay but meant it wouldn't really stand out. The character animations are fine, but the moves themselves just aren't inspired creations. Only a handful of characters have movelists that add to the personality. Most of them are really generic.

If the finished characters weren't so cool, how about the unfinished one. Warmech is a real mess. The character is a completely undercooked design. While the concept of adding in a Dwarven machine seemed pretty cool, the character could have used a little bit more time in the oven to fix such horrible colour palettes and terrible robot designs.

If the characters were so terrible, what were the ones that did work? Deimos is the character that is almost in every poster of the game. He naturally should be the front runner in terms of design. Deimos' design isn't anything special. The character is like a metal teddy bear with a giant sword, but he ends up being the most imposing selectable figure in the game. He's big, he's strong, and he'll make mince meat out of you. Most importantly, when someone thinks of MACE, Deimos is always the character remembered. Al Rashid comes in as the flamboyant and stylish fighter that wins points for bringing those in spades. Grendal and Asmodeus were quite well done for me. They were supposed to be bosses and they served well to be the tormentor of the game. As far as I'm concerned those were the ones that worked for me, the others... umm... not so much.

Moving on, let's touch what sort of idea I think Atari wanted for this game.

First and foremost, I would think Atari wanted a game that could match Soul Edge, though it's fairly easy to see that the focus on gameplay should matter more than the visuals. A complete contradiction with what Atari was going for. Second I believe, is a focus on a fighter that was accessible (which should be strange for people who know how hard it is to play MACE).

At the crux of MACE's problems keeping it from achieving both are two fold. The first is how unbalanced the game is. Some characters were just too powerful, some had infinites, and some were just too underpowered. It just made MACE undeniably broken. Namira is a sultry dancer but is too clumsy to use in practical combat. She has a fairly okay movelist, but some of her moves are completely not practical to survive. Koyasha could poke and do some damage, but she was never agile enough to save her skin. There was a natural lean on characters that can dish out and take damage without taking up an insane amount of damage. Among those characters, you have those that take incredible amount of damage for a 3 hit combo and those that only need to pin you down once and keep you there for the duration of the round. Cheap, and incredibly annoying at times.

The second problem is how bug ridden it is for a game that had taken 2 years to build. The control detection is anything but accessible. It was too sensitive, too touchy and ultimately killed the game before it got any sort of start. Atari/Midway opted to build a game that would not require a very precise reflex to perform moves, and if you can test out MACE, you can perform a quarter circle forward+S move by literally doing the quarter circle forward THEN the S button. You wouldn't need to be precisely pressing the S button as soon as you press forward. This sort of lax move detection would have been fine, but the mere fact MACE was too sensitive made the character do anything but the move. Back, Forward moves were a nightmare to do, much less executions that required a Forward, Half Circle Forward motions.

In terms of fighting, MACE had a counter attack system that was too shallow to make of anything. Perhaps for simplicity, but you end up tossing it out of your playbook. It's useful for only standing strikes, and it's much better to side step than use this. Speaking of side-step, it required a good timing from the player to use this effectively and in MACE, not learning it is synonymous to getting killed. This meant players would have to sit down and learn how to get it right, which compounds the control irritation. The side-step mechanic also gave characters very similar feel. You had to figure out what works based on the template of side-step, attack combo, follow-up, side-step. MACE's infamous nature also meant it was poorly documented, making this other grab counter system difficult to figure out. I could never figure it out, being able to perform it in rare occasions.

The camera work is another source of irritability. There are some levels where you just basically cannot see a thing. Takeshi's castle level is one good example. The game normally picks the high point of the castle as a starting place to fight, with the camera getting very easily obstructed by the wooden planks that act as railings. Sometimes, the camera behaves oddly, picking up the action from above the characters and totally disorienting players.

But those aren't the only problems MACE had. There's a serious, serious collision detection problem with it with some moves I could have sworn would hit but the game didn't pick up. Framerate is also atrocious at times, which is never favorable in any fighting games. There are other glitches that involve characters getting stuck in backgrounds, random switching of characters from side to side. There's also a slew of minor glitches that give MACE a total half-baked feel to it. It wasn't ready, and it could have used a bit more quality control.

At this point, we've basically mangled MACE to bits but it's only fair we touch on the good points. MACE had some pretty good visuals. The levels, though uninspiring, were large and made for good space to fight on. It's easy to tell Atari spend time on giving the game a good visual look to it. Level hazards were welcome additions but I think, under-used. It need not be over the top like Mortal Kombat, but more creative designs should be made for these things. The landscape weapons you could pick up are nice but easily unfinished and underused.

The AI work is also adjusted so that the first enemies tend to be easier, which acts as a good way to ease players into the game. This is normally understandable for any arcade fighter but it's nice that Atari had the sensibility to add this.

One last detail I want to underscore is that Atari excluded the block button, which I never really got used to, which made MACE a very accessible game for me. The block button was an extra nuance and I am sure a lot of players have gotten used to it. Not me. I prefer to press back to block and thankfully this game accomodates that.

If MACE is full of problems, why did I spend all this time discussing it? MACE is a flawed fighting game and in many sections pretty mediocre. However, when I pick up new fighting games, there's just something wrong when I have 3 attack buttons which inevitably ends up like millions of moves to learn per character. Looking at this kind of predicament, it's easy to appreciate what fighting games were like back in the mid-90s. MACE had a move list that wasn't like getting a hard rib shot. Each character had a good number of moves to learn and then most of your game time is spent on exploring how to use it (and wrestling with control problems). I found myself enjoying MACE more than other fighters (the most recent one I tried is Soul Calibur 2). But maybe that's because I've invested too much time into MACE, understanding its intricacies and problems and letting myself ignore its flaws and enjoy the game as it is.

This leads to how anyone can really enjoy MACE. MACE, is a game that requires players to ignore the glaring problems it has. It's got some fun in it, and multiplayer should be interesting, but it requires players to totally submit themselves to the control mayhem it is and a complete headache it sometimes is. But when you do and you start pulling off the 7 hit combo strings, you'll find yourself with a fighting game that surprisingly seems a little bit more pick-up and play than most modern fighters.