M.A.C.E is a shoot em up developed by Entwickler-X. The developer has made a few games before for mobile but let's take a look at their first foray onto the Xbox One.
I started the game up and was greeted with a simple menu. I immediately clicked begin and once I started I could tell pretty much what the whole game would be like. Kill the bad guys, collect the power ups and don't get hit. While it’s pretty generic and doesn’t do anything new for the genre, considering its roots on mobile I think it's not the worst way to spend some time.
The graphics are not the greatest but for the $5 price point I think there really wasn’t any crazy expectations. It’s got a bit of a hand drawn aesthetic and the sprites are simple with little animation.
The best part of the game is the gameplay. It starts out very generic but there are a variety of weapons available. Each weapon has 3 upgrade levels which are obtained by collecting an upgrade or weapon drop from defeated enemies, destroyed asteroids or specific upgrade carriers, which drop up to 4 upgrades to choose from. I found a minor frustration in this system where if you collect a fully upgraded weapon it's basically a waste of an upgrade.
The different weapons really provided variety to the gameplay. Each time I thought I had found the greatest weapon I would use a different one for some reason and realise that it was also good in the right situation.
I played a few rounds on the normal difficulty and quickly realised that the key to getting far was to not die at all. Each time you die you lose an upgrade. This can really ruin the momentum of the game and I found it being more and more of a reason to quit and play something else. The last run I did before I sat down to write the review I ended up quitting at the boss in order to preserve my weapons and due to the levels taking a bit long I eventually decided to call it quits
The music of the game also isn’t really anything to write home about. It’s not bad but I found myself quickly reaching for my headphones to listen to some music or podcasts while playing the game.The game has co op which is a nice touch but due to my level of enjoyment of the game I didn’t really feel the need to try it out. This is a nice touch for the people who are looking for a nice simple couch co-op game.Overall I enjoyed my first 2 or 3 hours with this game and I can see someone who enjoys the genre might get some more time out of it.
So I will say this is a solid 5/10.
