If you've ever wanted to play a sci-fi RPG set on Mars and which has hardly any weapons besides melee arms built from scrap metal, then Mars: War Logs is the one you should give a look to. It might not be the best cRPG, nor even the most original one, but as far action RPGs go, it is decent enough and doesn't last longer than it has to.
Somewhere in the future, Mars has been colonized by humanity. It's not all song and dances, as the Martians have fractured into guilds, who battle over water as that is the key for ruling Mars. The story begins from a war prisoner camp, where a young soldier called Innocence has just been transported. It doesn't take long for a local gang to take notice of him, but just before things got worse, Roy Temperance, a gruff, leather-clad prisoner steps up to save him. Roy is whom you play the game as. He's a man of mystery, whose attitude you can affect a bit by choosing how he communicates with the people. Basically, you can be either a full-blown asshole, more neutral or something of a good guy.
 |
| The grumpy hero Roy and the more ideological Innocence |
Roy isn't one to willingly sit out his imprisonment, so the first part of the game takes you to find a way to escape. Innocence in tow, Roy begins to rummage the prison camp and collect things and the allies he needs to get out. So, basically, run around the camp, accept different kinds of missions from everyone you meet and make alliances in the process. One important aspect of this is making friends with the downtrodden mutants, who are treated as slaves by everyone else.
At the final stretches to their escape, Roy manages to kill a Technomancer in the lead of the camp. He also reveals, while putting on the Technomancer's power equipment, that he was a member of this highly trained group. Gameplay-wise, this means Roy can now do magic-like technological attacks and defences. As far as the story is concerned, Roy gets a Technomancer named Mary after him.
The duo ends up in Shadowlair, where they learn of the death of Innocence's parents. The young man wants to know what happened and Roy agrees to help him. After a while, they find a resistance cell that aids them forward. You can also make choices here, which affect who will accompany Roy to the last stretches of the tale. There's also a possibility to decide whom you side with, the resistance or the powers that be, Aurora.
 |
| Technomancer Mary |
In the end, Roy and whoever is with him ends at the Techmancer headquarters. After some intense fighting, they end up at the bosses office, where they see Wisdom killed by his own ally. The power shifts from one hand to another, Roy leaves and does his epilogue based on how you played the game.
Technically, Mars: War Logs is a decent game. A good deal of the game is combat and the system is decent enough. Not as fluent as it could be, but serviceable after you spend some time with it. Roy's main offensive is whatever melee weapon he has at hand, but he can spruce up the attacks with his Technomancer skills, precious nailgun shots and grenades. Nailgun ammo and grenades can be either bought from merchants or built. All the equipment Roy has can be upgraded, but only to a limited point. You do have to find better stuff as the game goes on. There's also a kind of a stealth system, but I found it more or less pointless.
The controls work well enough. Some aspects, like dodging, do feel a bit stiff, but overall, I didn't have any big issues with how the controls work. It's a decent base system that could be fine-tuned into a more efficient model of combat controls with a bit more polish. There's a certain degree of clumsiness in the controls, especially when surrounded by several enemies, but it's nothing game-breaking or overly frustrating. It's just something you should take into account before starting the game.
 |
| Roy meeting a friend |
As it often is with modern cRPGs, Mars: War Logs has a system for crafting stuff. What this means is, that you need to collect all kinds of junk from the game world as well as decide how much valuable energy you want to draw from your fallen enemies, so in other words, you can kill them for maximum loot or just leave them alive and take smaller portions. This energy is also used as money, so how much you can spend on building things or shopping depends on how murderous you want to be. There's never an overabundance of the stuff, so you do have to make some decision on what you really need or how you want to come out.
Graphically, Mars looks okay. Not the greatest, but mostly fine. The locations are run down and aged. Nothing could be really described as beautiful or good looking. This goes to the character models as well. It's all passable but not really more than that. This applies to the animations as well.
The voice acting is included. That's probably the best thing I can say about it. Nothing about it is really annoying, but nothing about is it really great either. It's more or less run in the mill style of actors reading their lines in the gusto of actors reading their lines from a script with no particular enthusiasm about it. Or you could always say, they are doing their jobs well enough to not really cause huge emotions in one way or another on how they perform. And at times, that's the best you can ask for.
Mars: War Logs is fun enough for what it is, especially if you don't go in expecting to be awed by it. It's more or less a competent attempt what comes to small budget cRPGs. I've definitely played much worse. There's also a sequel, a 2016 release aptly named The Technomancer. Obviously, they took the most interesting aspect from here and just ran with it. I'll probably play it at some point, it can be bought with less than a fiver often enough from sales.
Comments
Post a Comment