Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Developer: Spiders
System requirements: Windows XP SP3/Vista SP2/Win 7/Win 8, 2.2 GHz dual-core CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB DirectX 9-compatible graphics card with Shader Model 4.0 support, DirectX 9-compatible sound device, DirectX 9, 3 GB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now
We humans have had an intense fascination with the planet Mars for many years. HG Wells sent cylinders from the red planet to terrorize Tom Cruise and conquer Earth. Games, movies and books have all been devoted to the exploration, colonization and exploitation of Mars. The newest addition to the ever-growing collection of Martian media is Mars: War Logs, an RPG from French developer Spiders that uses old-looking tech to try to do something new.
Water is scarce on Mars. Scarce enough, in fact, to start an all-out war among the four corporations trying to capture enough of it to make the planet habitable for humans. A casualty of this war is Roy, a soldier for a company called Aurora who has been captured and placed in a work camp by the most powerful of the factions, Abundance. When the war ends, Roy returns to his home and discovers that things aren’t quite the same as they were when he left. Lawlessness and thuggery of all sorts rule the streets, scientists are creating mutant humans to do the dangerous and menial jobs, and a caste known as Technomancers uses the electricity generated by the human body as a weapon, making them the most feared people in the world. But a resistance movement is growing, and eventually Roy must choose to align himself with either the resistance or the forces of a rogue general to try to set things right again.
Mars: War Logs follows the typical RPG playbook. Completing quests and winning fights builds XP. Leveling up gives you points to upgrade your abilities in three skill trees, only two of which are available immediately (the Technomancer tree doesn’t unlock until deep into the game). You also get additional character upgrades called Feats, which are general buffs that make it more likely for your Roy to be successful in various ways. As you move through the environments, you find pulsating piles of parts and glowing crates that contain inventory items used to upgrade your weapons and armor. You also have a crafting kit that allows you to create important items such as health injections and ammunition.
Combat in Mars: War Logs is primarily melee. Your only projectile weapon is a nail gun that you get early in the game, lose it for a time, then get it back. Gaining Technomancer powers gives you the ability to supercharge your melee weapon and create a temporary shield barrier that doesn’t really appear to protect you from anything, although it does do damage to an enemy who attacks you while the shield is raised. Avoidance comes in the form of the combat roll, a skill that needs to be mastered to survive most fights later on in the game, mostly because the NPC companions who follow you around (one at a time) are practically useless in combat. They don’t die, but they’re easily knocked out and never recover in time to help you, so you’re pretty much on your own once they go down. When you do finally prevail, your human enemies are only incapacitated (creatures are always killed), so you could finish the entire game without killing a soul.
The game has a hand-drawn Borderlands look that serves it well, background-wise. But there are a host of problems that make War Logs really hard to recommend. You can’t re-map keyboard controls, so you’re stuck doing finger gymnastics trying to activate abilities; the only customization available is the ability to assign weapons and abilities to numerical hotkeys. Voice acting is universally awful, and the salty dialogue alone earns the game its Mature rating. Defeated enemies remain where they fall throughout the game, writhing on the ground in pain; you’d have thought someone would find them and get them to medical assistance. Old-school graphics glitches such as clipping and moving characters getting caught on geometry are everywhere; enemies fall through solid objects and companions can be seen running in place as if they’re on treadmills. There’s a pimp in the second act of the story who doesn’t really pimp; he asks if you want some “company,” you ask to see his inventory, and instead of girls you get standard inventory items. The autosave system is generally good (you can also save anytime), but it fails to autosave after a major boss battle in the final act. The end of the battle triggers a cutscene, then another battle begins without the chance to quicksave, so you have to have enough health to survive the second battle or you end up fighting the boss creature again. And there’s no fast-travel mechanic; I spent a large chunk of my 24 play hours running from place to place, frequently all the way across the map.
Many things about Mars: War Logs scream out previous-generation gaming: clunky animations, bad acting, repetitive questing. But developer Spiders has used the tech and the resources they had to create an RPG that’s certainly not state of the art, but nonetheless engrossing and entertaining. It’s not gaming’s best trip to the red planet, to be sure, but it’s a good pickup for RPG gamers on a budget.
Our Score: 
Our Recommendation: 
© Michael Smith for The Adrenaline Vault, 2013. | Permalink | No comment(s)
