Mars: War Logs Review
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Performance and polishOn my now 4-year-old machine Mars: War Logs ran rather well, with very few framerate dips and bugs, and only one crash that I recall during the 13 hours it took me to complete the game. Unfortunately, moving away from these purely technical aspects, it's easy to see how unpolished the game actually is. The interface is terrible, whether you're playing with mouse and keyboard or a gamepad. Even the simplest things take more than a few clicks (e.g. attributes are all separated in their own sub-menus, instead of being shown on a sheet). Shortcuts can be used to enter menus but not to leave them. There's no way to select a quantity of items you want to buy or craft. You can only visualize 4 of the 9 available hotkeys for your abilities in your normal interface. There are probably some other problems I didn't remember to note down, but this should already offer a pretty solid idea of how little there is to enjoy about it.
There's a host of problems with the controls and camera too. You can't customize keybinds, neither with mouse and keyboard nor with gamepad. Speaking of the gamepad's control scheme, there are some annoyances with it too. Specifically, running and moving the camera at the same time is arguably impossible unless the way you hold your controller is highly unorthodox, given that A is the running button and you move the camera with the right analog. You'll need to move the camera often too as there's no auto-correct. Finally, there are three different keys to handle interactions (E to talk with companions, R to transition to another area, and the left mouse button to talk to normal NPCs and open containers and normal doors) when one would suffice.
The game's narrative also seems to be inconsistent in terms of continuity: sometimes companion forget what they've seen while they were with me, other times my protagonist magically discovered things that had never been mentioned to him before, like the actual identity of the lost brother of one NPC. There are only 50 slots available to save the game. Collisions seem to be quite random too, as quite a few times I ran into a tight but arguably walkable point to discover an invisible wall, while other times some hidden nooks and cranny didn't look accessible, but actually were.
Conclusions
European low-budget role-playing games tend to be games of highs and lows, often incredibly unpolished, clunky and with some broken mechanics, but also laden with surprising details and secrets, neat, forward-thinking mechanics and a hardcore attitude that the big-budget productions have completely forgotten by now.
Mars: War Logs, however, is not that kind of game. It's a game of flat, even mediocrity, that might not sink quite as low and be as broken as those niche titles I mentioned earlier, but doesn't have any of their highs either. Sure, there are a few neat ideas, but it's not enough. Ultimately, Mars: War Logs is as dull and barren as the planet it takes places on.
