I felt like playing a janky choice-driven RPG on my Steam Deck, and this gritty AA deepcut is hitting the spot for just 99 cents
Mars War: Logs is not a brilliant or even very good RPG, but it's definitely interesting in a way that's more appealing to me than most blockbuster fare. French eurojank purveyors Spiders released it in 2013 and, like most Spiders RPGs, it didn't review particularly well. Nevertheless, some players seem to enjoy it after all these years, so I thought I'd boot it up.
I did sample it back in 2013 but was compelled to revisit after playing Greedfall: The Dying World recently. I didn't love that new RPG, but after fifteen minutes spent with Mars I was completely in my element. This is neither fantasy or rote sci-fi, but something grittier, like a hard boiled '80s prison film set in an apocalyptic future where everything is unaccountably much browner than a seventh-generation cover shooter. We're on Mars, you see.
It stars Roy, a terse, quippy prisoner of war stuck in a wretched Mars-based prison. The planet remains wracked by a centuries-old disaster that keeps its remaining colonisers locked in a war over water and other resources. It's engaging and evocative despite Spiders' clear tech limitations: when prisoners aren't choking in Martian sandstorms they're labouring in mines and fending off aggressive overgrown moles, or attacking each other with poles and improvised nail guns.
The concept and setting is great, though on the level of detail the writing isn't amazing, and the voice acting is often laughable. That may make Mars: War Logs a dealbreaker for people raised on bigger budget RPGs, but as with most fun 'n' wooly AA RPGs, the game compensates for its shortcomings with soul and quiet ambition. It has some neat tricks up its sleeves: Mid-combat you can throw sand in the eyes of your opponents to effectively stun them for a moment, and not only that, sand throwing can be upgraded. Combat is otherwise wooden and merely functional, but only slightly more so than in, say, the first Mass Effect.
BioWare is pretty obviously an influence on Mars: War Logs, which excels as a choice-driven RPG. I haven't finished it yet, but it reportedly only runs for around 15 hours, so it's not a huge time investment if you end up being hooked by the story but not the gameplay. It's currently going for only 99 cents on Steam as part of the Spring sale, which makes it basically an essential buy for fans of rough-around-the-edges gems. Especially if you've got a Steam Deck, on which it runs perfectly. Its spiritual sequel, The Technomancer, is also going very cheap.
In his 2013 review for PC Gamer, Jon Blyth pretty much nailed it. "It's clumsily goodhearted, and has a couple of great moments where you feel like you're affecting the world," he wrote. "Every bit of it needs more time and money, but it's something of a surprise to find that I left the game genuinely fond of its big, fractionally-realised ambition." How could you deny that?