The Bounty Hounds is the name given to a mercenary corps in the 24th century. Comprising mainly of fugitives and other unsavoury characters, they are paid to do the dirty work that the United Galaxy Space Force will not do. Playing as Maximilian, the leader of this mercenary force, you are sent on a mission to the distant planet Ghies in order to investigate why the terraforming units Groundbreaker and Architect have ceased transmitting and also to retrieve the technology behind them. Upon arrival the Bounty Hounds encounter armed resistance in the form of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI) who also want to control the planet for their own purposes and thus a battle with the aliens ensues and a conspiracy unfolds...

Slick presentation and silky smooth frame rates abound and technically the game cannot be faulted. Starting out on your ship Quicksilver, you can wander the deck talking to your fellow Hounds and accessing the shops on offer. As to be expected it is in these shops that you can regain your health, buy and sell weapons and other items, tune up your skills and abilities and analyse/equip your items. When ready you can teleport down to the planet via the Farcaster system and the real game begins.

The planet environments are well presented and textured, with a mix of indoor and outdoor locations and the heavy use of fogging only adds to the sense of alien worlds. Animation is smooth both for the protagonist Maximilian and the many alien enemies whom are both varied and plentiful. Sound too is fitting for the purpose, and whilst repetitive is never grating.

However despite being technically accomplished, the game is not without its faults. The locations, whilst vast, are devoid of any interactivity. Other than following the map to reach your goal there is precious little to do in them. The mini-map itself is dubious is its usage, displaying too small a game area to be of any real worth other than pointing the direction you should head in. And whilst the enemies are varied there are far too many of them, not helped by seemingly respawning all around you and at random. Should you choose to stand and fight, then after a time you will deplete all the alien enemies in your current location and earn a respite from attack until you reach the next checkpoint. Not that this serves any purpose other than gaining experience points as quick as possible as the environments have little bonus features or hidden extras to find.

Occasionally, defeated enemies will drop weapons, armour and other items which can then be scavenged from their bodies. Anything obtained though cannot be used until it has been analysed either by returning to the Quicksilver or by using some of your precious material stock in order to perform the analysis yourself. This material stock is also used when reloading your equipped projectile weapons and so in practice the player will often find themself returning to the ship to analyse items, topping up on health and other necessities before returning to the last checkpoint on the planet. Thus the flow of the game is unintentionally ruined by this stop/start process. A further extension of this nonsensical arrangement exists when attempting to equip weapons in the inventory, which is only allowed back on the Quicksilver thus effectively forcing a return to the ship.

All this might not be so bad were it not for the sheer number of ETIs that present themselves. Initially they are suitably weak but it soon becomes necessary to level up skills and equip more powerful weapons in order to survive their more damaging attacks. In addition the continually respawing ETIs soon become annoying, especially when they choose to respawn behind you. The camera does not help a great deal either, with no built-in intelligence and thus no auto-recentring (this is accomplished manually via the left shoulder button) and remaining fairly stationary often obscuring Maximilian behind the many ETIs or providing unhelpful camera angles. This is never more evident than in some of the tough boss battles - tough, because the bosses have weapons powerful enough to take Maximilian out with a couple of shots and have an energy bar requiring multiple hits to deplete to zero. However the toughest battle is with the camera, which due to the lack of a lock-on feature and any effort to try to keep both Maximilian and enemy in view at one time, means that half the time you cannot even see where your opponent is and thus shooting becomes a somewhat hit-and-miss affair.

As mentioned, ETIs provide tough opposition due to their superior numbers and some tough boss battles and Maximilian won't progress very far until you learn to equip yourself properly, power up your skills and abilities and use your force fields to full effect. These force fields come in two main flavours – a shield which casts a sphere around Maximilian protecting him from up to three enemy attacks and a regular force field which casts a wider dome and impacts whoever is inside differently. Both force fields deplete your force gauge which can be recharged on the ship or via defeating ETIs. The effect your force field has depends on which abilities you have equipped. Again, there are two main types – Up, which means Maximilian will have special abilities whilst inside the field, and Down, where any enemies inside the field will be impaired. When your force shield is equipped you can perform a charge attack or a powerful impact blast which helps even the score with the ETIs. In addition more than one force field can be combined for different effects and thus the combat system provides a greater complexity and depth than initial appearances would indicate.

All in all whilst looking great on the surface, scratching a little deeper reveals some flaws, with Bounty Hounds feeling more like a tech demo that has been turned into a game rather than a game in its own right. Whilst the genre it belongs to might be hard to define, with too many ingredients added into the mix and not enough forethought as to how the pieces fit together it is clear that the game firmly falls into the 'what could have been' category. Sometimes less really is more.