Proof that Mars is hell.
Mars: War Logs tells a rather cramped story of an attempted escape from one of the worst outposts in Mars. A fight over water by two factions – Aurora and Abudance – forces Roy Temperance (a former POW himself) to assist help from Mars newcomer Innocence Smith in a bid to get away from the fight that is brewing amidst the two factions. It's an interesting premise, but its immediately thwarted by horrendous voice acting and cringe-worthy dialogue. The writing is terrible, thinking by way of primary school children who have stumbled across the Naughty Book of Expletives. There is constant cursing, hate and violence, but its not the story-based kind of violence, its unnecessary and irrelevant. Punctuating this is the poor visual design. Even by PlayStation Network standards (which has some really nice visual showcases), Mars: War Logs lacks even the simplest of detail. Some decent lighting aside, animations are terrible (just block and watch your AI companions) and character models are awful, in tandem with PS2 era lip syncing. The sound design is equally bad. I spoke about the voice work, but the sound effects lag and often cut out. It breaks the immersion considerably.
GAMEPLAY
Mars: War Logs hinges on physical combat, scouring for materials and RPG elements like dialogue choices, levelling up and skill trees. It all sounds fine, but the execution is very poor. The combat borders between playable and terrible. Swinging weapons ranging from pipes to tubes (I know, right) and nailguns feels sluggish and slow. The controls don't help either, with some confusing button combinations. AI is laughable across the board. Following a hilarious opening 10 minute cut-scene, the combat follows against braindead opposition. They just stand there in an attacking motion and wait for you to deal them a killing blow. My AI companions are worse. Their animations bug (Innocence loops on a block animation then walking, then back again) and they just run into enemies and die easily. It's not fun, and the level design is poor. There is no help with map navigation, skills and levelling up are useless (I killed dozens of enemies without hitting the level up screen) and the weapons are uninteresting. At least the checkpoints are decent.
REPLAYABILITY
It's considerably short, and I couldn't even find myself playing over two hours of it, because it's THAT bad. Mars: War Logs contains materials to find and many quests, but they are so poorly implemented and the combat so woeful that I couldn't continue. Everything in the game has been done better elsewhere, and there is no reason to finish it, let alone play through again.
SUMMARY
Presentation 3.0
Gameplay 1.5
Replayability 1.0
Overall – 1.5/10