Deliver Us Mars - Review
In 2018, developer KeokeN Interactive released Deliver Us The Moon, a narrative game that was set in the future, where Earth was in terrible shape and the Moon was our last hope. That game wasn’t one I played upon release; in fact I only played it a few weeks before Deliver Us Mars released. What I took from it, was a story that grew depending on how deep you went into the recordings and such, so I had big hopes for the sequel. With Mars being a dream for so many, could a game that takes place on the red planet, deliver something amazing?
While a sequel to Deliver us the Moon, you don’t technically have had to have played the first game, to enjoy this one. The story uses some of the same characters, but this time instead of being in audio logs or text communications, they are front and centre. If however, you have played the first game, then you will understand the motivations for some characters here a lot more quickly. I don’t think not having played the first game will hurt you, but going in knowing who some of the characters were, did give me a bit of a preconception about how they might behave. As for the actual story, well after the folks from the Moon left it behind to venture Outward, Earth began to fall apart even more, but when a mysterious radio transmission is received from Mars, a small crew is assembled to find out what is going on. The crew consists of four people, Ryan is the only new one, as Sarah, Claire and Kathy are all returning from the first game. Returning is a bit of a stretch as both Claire and Kathy are only mentioned in logs and Sarah was the person whose path you followed in the first game.
The reason for the trip to Mars, isn’t just to find out what happened to the folks from the Moon, who gave up on saving Earth, but it is to recover the ARKs. There were three ARKs and each one was designed to support a specific function and with even one of them, the hope for Earth’s restoration can begin to rise. Beyond that however, I don’t want to say too much about the story, as like the first game discovering it for yourself is crucial to enjoying it. I will say though that the Johanson family of which Claire and Kathy are from, have a lot of issues and most of that is attributed to the dad, Isaac. If the name sounds familiar, he was also in the first game and spent time with Sarah, so layers on layers here. Again without spoiling anything, Isaac is a selfish person, with Kathy not being much better and the problem is that the game tends to focus on their dynamic with flashbacks and such. When the story started to focus on the two characters I didn’t like, I honestly zoned out, because the actions they undertook and behaviour were not interesting to me.
What was though, was the gameplay and while there is almost no major differences between the two games, there is some improvements to elements that are present. The most useful one, at least for me, was that when you are in an area that has no air, i.e. on the planets surface, sprinting doesn’t run down your O2 faster. Of course, the game failed to make that clear so when I was trying to shave of corners of a run early on, as I just kept missing the door and dying from a lack of air, so finding out sprinting didn’t impact it was a welcome relief. Another change is that your little floating robot can decrypt the holograms now, rather than just accessing them, this is a change that hasn’t worked in the games favour though. Decryption takes place in a 3d space, where the position of your robot, which you manually control, determines where the plugs go. More of then than not it was an exercise in frustration, rather than celebration in attempting to get the items put together and sometimes the slightest movement could undo your hard work.
Most of the rest of the game has you connecting MPT terminals together, basically lasers without the laser, something that the game insists only Kathy can do. Connecting them is pretty simple, you just need to point the starting point to the end point and you are done, as the game progresses though, it does start to throw in some complications. These are usually in the way of MPT splitters or signal compressors and trying to work out the right placement of those, in conjunction with the start and end points, can take some trial and error. As far as new mechanics go, it is my favourite over the climbing. You would think scaling cliff faces on Mars would be amazing and the idea is, however the execution here is not as fun as it could be. In order to use the climbing axe, at least on PC, the left mouse button controls the left and the right the right. Not clicking a button down means Kathy is lifting the climbing axe up and then you control where she aims with the movement keys, sounds great. The problem is that it is so slow and there are times when your position doesn’t quite work and having to back track around obstacles and hazards doesn’t really work.
Much of the rest of the gameplay is more about travelling from one location to another, sometimes on foot and sometimes in a vehicle. Where the game falls short from the first game is that it warps you around at times, usually once you have completed a segment of the game. This does help speed things up, but the joy in the first game, at least for me, was in the having to walk to and from a location. I can understand from a development point of view, you want to keep people engaged in the game, but I just feel that it lost something with that removal. Something else that honestly pissed me off, is that the game has some scripted moments where things are meant to happen, which is fine. However in this instance, I was cutting some debris from around the spaceship, with the warning not to hit a specific part and I didn’t. But the game didn’t care, it triggered the event and with how careful I was, seeing that the game just didn’t care, made me angry.
Moving away from gameplay and into the presentation, things are improved across the board, as one might expect with a sequel. There is a lot of effort applied to the characters, mostly because this time we see their faces, but there are issues with them. The world itself is the star, not just the planet of Mars, but the spaceships, the buildings and everything else, it all comes together to make it feel possible. While you are only out in space early on, you get some more challenging tasks and taking a moment to just look out into the void, it really feels spooky. When you finally land on the planet and you get to see the red planet for itself, there is some wonderful things to see. Of course, everything being red could have easily been a lot, but the developers have applied some fun to items, with shades and textures to make it all feel real. Even when there is ice around you, it feels familiar and yet alien at the same time, though seeing one of the Mars rovers helps make it feel grounded, it even plays the sad happy birthday music when you interact with it.
Where it fails visually is with the human characters and its just that they don’t look that great. They look fine of course, but when the world looks so good, the people in it, needed to be better and the fact that they are not hurts. It isn’t just the faces that are wrong, though they are, but its even the character models themselves that feel out of place. Some times there were moments where I felt the actual rig that controlled the character, wasn’t quite mapped to the model, which gave them weird walks, the result was that it pulled me from the experience. In addition to that, there were times when holograms and items would just not show, which when the camera focuses on someone and then fails to render them, it again breaks the immersion.
On the sound side of things, there is a wonderful blend of isolation and danger, thanks to the lack of a lot of noise when in space and on your own. That all fades away when the game ramps up the action, for whatever reason its doing it and the music comes into play. Sometimes you would have someone reach out to you over the radio, and while you can’t trigger a response, when your character does, there is a sense of relief to them hearing your voice. The isolation, even when you are not alone is wonderful, thanks in part to the games ability to know when to be quiet, I do wish that you could respond when called over the radio, that would have been nice.
Deliver Us Mars is a delightful game, it offers a story that connects to the first game, expanding upon the world it built. Where the game shines is in discovering the story, some of it is via holographic logs and other times its text messages. The problem is that there are times when your character is being a selfish piece of.. yeah and that makes it hard to enjoying playing as them. A few choice moments, where you could respond instead of being selfish could have made a big difference, but as it stands its not fun. While the gameplay is mostly the same as the first game, there are some wonderful inclusions that give you some real challenges, especially in the later game. Fans of the first game will enjoy how the world is expanded with this game and new comers will find a nice story that unfolds over a decent pace, the only real issue, that cliff hanger ending.
The Score
8.5
Review code provided by Frontier Foundry
The Pros
+A larger world with more story and characters to discover
+Gameplay feels like an evolution of the first game
The Cons
-The playable character and her father are beyond selfish
-The games climbing system isn’t that fun after the first few times you use it
