Game Cover

Platform played on: Xbox One (One X Enhanced)

# Review

This is yet another MMO going offline. In this open world survival game, the player assumes the role of a clone who awakes in a laboratory on Mars. The clone is tasked with surviving the desolate planet and finding out what happened in the past that caused humans to abandon their mining operations on the red planet.

Red Planet

The game has no real story, but there is a main series of missions that will guide the player from the start to endgame. The missions oversee all aspects of the game, from basic survival, to crafting weapons and gear, to building out bases. The game starts slow with very in depth tutorials that somehow still misses very important details (my first base was deleted because I did not realize that you have to upgrade for the building to persist for more than 2 hours). I did quite enjoy the crafting and building aspects of the game, and found survival to be pretty easy as the game goes on.

My second base (after the first was deleted)

As the story progresses, the player explores different areas on Mars, encountering different hostile machines. The combat is decent but not incredible; I do like the atmosphere, especially the tension when you can hear an enemy but don’t know where they are.

Fighting a spider robot

While the exploration is fun at first, it does get boring after a bit, especially since players have limited carrying capacity and have to keep walking back and forth from their bases to the exploration areas to keep grabbing loot. Travel in this game is incredibly boring; there is no fast travel so players have to walk everywhere. This is incredibly boring because the vast majority of the world is barren.

Exploring an abandoned human settlement

Some other issues include the UI which is very cumbersome and unintuitive. Navigating the different menus can be a nightmare due to the weird controls and sensitivity. I'd imagine the game is probably much better on PC. The game is also a tad grindy; players often have to complete repetitive tasks such as mining resources or killing enemies to get enough currency (Flops) to proceed with the story.

One of the worst menus I've used in a video game

The game is multiplayer-only but, like The Crew, really doesn’t have to be. While there are some PVP events (which I have yet to experience because the servers were dead when I played), the vast majority of the game is PVE. There are some cool structures that people have put up (some of which, such as bridges, are helpful) and players can fight enemies together, but other than that there really is no benefit of playing with others. Making the game multiplayer only also negates the narrative of a lone clone waking up on Mars. The servers for the game will be shut down, and so far it appears there won’t be an offline patch, meaning the game will be unplayable post-shutdown. On top of that, the multiplayer also causes the framerate to be rough at times.

Structures built by other players

# Conclusion

Another decent game ruined by mandatory multiplayer.

# Overall rating: 7.3

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