Fighting games are just pure awesome. There are so many good ones like Street Fighter 2, King of Fighters, Power Stone, and multiple others. Mortal Kombat is one of the more famous ones, since it instigated the rating of games, based on how violent they are. Sadly, there are also bad ones like Shaq-Fu and Kasumi Ninja, though there are some decent ones also like Mace: the Dark Age for the Nintendo 64.
The whole plot of Mace takes place in a medieval time, and is under chaos and distress, which isn’t anything new that we have seen in games like this. Let’s just put it this way. The story is kind of like Soul Calibur, since Mace is an evil power and wants to conquer the whole world, and it’s up to multiple warriors from all across the land to take it down or whatever is on their agenda. Sorry to sum it up like this, but it’s basically true.
Ironically, this game was made by Midway, which is famous for their other fighting franchise Mortal Kombat. Just like Mortal Kombat, Mace is a bloody fighting game. This game had a lot of great-looking characters, which remind me of Soul Calibur characters, especially Lord Deimos, who reminds me of Nightmare and Siegfried. There is always something that makes fighting games unique, like Soul Calibur is an all-weapons fighting game, and Super Smash Brothers uses simple controls. Mace has unique death moves, kind of like Mortal Kombat. There are also unlockable characters, which I have to say are some of the coolest unlockable characters ever! One of my favorites is the Warmech-driving Gar and Pojo the Chicken. That’s right, I said that you could play as a chicken. There is also funny stuff like a code that can make everyone wear furry bunny slippers.
The graphics are pretty awesome for the Nintendo 64. They look almost as good as Banjo Kazooie’s or Mortal Kombat 4’s graphics. The music is pretty interesting, since a lot of games have unique songs for each stage, though most of Mace’s music sounds like it should be in a death metal album. In fact, most of the characters sound like they are actually death metal artists. The environments are pretty good-looking as well, and interactive, like if a character goes in the water, it makes a splash, and it just sounds amazing.
Let’s pick up your weapon and beat up the bad parts of the game. First off, let’s talk about the controls. I haven’t talked about them since, well, they are kind of broken. The combo system is very poor, and it feels just a little delayed. The characters seem stiff and it’s unfair how the enemies can pull off combos when it’s already hard to, in the first place.
Overall, this is a pretty interesting game. Besides the poor controls and stiff difficulty, the game does have some entertainment still left in it. I would say if you can find it with a decent price on it, I would buy it. This is one of the better fighting games for the Nintendo 64, but it isn’t much, since there weren’t a lot of great fighting games for the console.
This game gets a 7.8 out of 10.
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