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Mars: War Logs Review
- Taylor Rioux
- 5 minutes ago
- 5 min read
The waters of Mars are not welcoming.
Mars is not a particularly appealing frontier, in my mind. Our current understanding of it (at least beyond the surface) is quite limited, and while our rapidly evolving knowledge can give us insight into its composition and history, little can be said of the benefits of colonizing or otherwise taking a trip to live on the red planet. This certainly hasn’t stopped some of the dumbest people on Earth from dreaming of doing so, however. Vile magnates like Elon Musk openly dream of starting colonies, floating ideas of practicing eugenics and forcing those on the planet to engage in lifelong servitude so that their toilet thoughts can be fully realized. Of course, rarely are the human costs of such an equation fully considered before such promises are made.
Mars: War Logs exists in world that I can only imagine as the optimal endpoint for such a colonization. The planet is controlled by factions of evil, corporate dictatorships (known as guilds), led and policed by drugged-up technocrats (technomancers). Slavery is big here, though they don’t outright name it — instead, people are thrown into prison work camps to do the dirty work needed by the guildfellows who have imprisoned them. From the buildings that stand on Mars to the very clothes people wear, everything is grimy, dusty, and run-down. When I say this is the “optimal” endpoint for such a dream, it is not to say that things are good — only that they technically function, at least for the time being.
Publisher: Focus Entertainment Developer: Spiders Platform: Played on PC Availability: Released April 26, 2013, on Steam; Released July 26 on Xbox 360 and August 13, 2013 on PS3. |
A bleak colonial frontier is a great setting, but Mars’ implementation is clumsy. The narrative is defined by a strange, moralizing literalism; we see the world through a character named “Innocence,” who is surrounded by a choir of "virtues" like “Tenacity” and “Charity” — though such characters may or may not actually live up to those named ideals. After a whirlwind of background lore about the water wars, the story attempts to establish its "mature" credentials by immediately putting Innocence in the path of a prison-camp predator who threatens him with rape.
After being saved by the main character Roy (who does so by just standing ominously about 15 feet away from the would-be assaulter), we are given our first dialogue choice that amounts to little more than a choice between nice answer, neutral answer, and evil answer. This strict “morality” of available options is poorly handled here in the moment and throughout the entirety of the game. I suppose in that sense, it is quite like the Mass Effect games that Mars so clearly wishes to emulate. Every response can be broken down into which of these three paths you want to take, and doing so shapes the reputation of your character to other characters within the game.
However, unlike the Mass Effect games, there is little difference in practice between being a mean guy or a nice fella. In gameplay, your reputation is shifted by those dialogue choices and by in-game actions. If you finish off your enemies and harvest their blood for serum after having defeated them, you get dinged as having done a bad thing. Obviously, there is no consideration for the fact that the cops keep showing up to kill you and will continue to do so even if you let them live. It does come up with each of your companions at least once, but generally manifests as a single throwaway line in larger sets of dialogue. This morality system feels incomplete — lacking, even — against the backdrop of the world being built around us. Surely there is more to this world than good and bad? One would assume context would be important, but each decision lies on this ternary.
Mars certainly is coarse.
Nearly every other design decision feels similarly incomplete. You have interactive party members, but they are small in number and only have a few lines of conversation each. There is a crafting system, but the available recipes are exceedingly limited, with players really only able to craft a handful of items despite being given a veritable mountain of materials. The narrative is wholly disjointed, moving from point to point between acts in some of the most jarring transitions I’ve experienced in a video game. Each zone is full of people standing about, but only has 1-4 people you can actually speak to. It’s a grab-bag of all the typical 2010s RPG trappings, but none of the depth.
Yet that haphazard implementation of gameplay systems pales in comparison to the writing. I suppose some of this is exacerbated by the fact that the voice work is atrocious, but much of the dialogue is quite painful to sit through. The biggest victim of this specific element is women. For some strange reason, every single woman you speak to in the game offers to have sex with the main character, Roy, implies an offer of sex, or can be “romanced” within three lines of dialogue. It is not a bad thing to allow characters to form relationships or have agency and preferences. It is a bad thing that every single speaking female character in the entire game specifically and explicitly desires to bed the player character. It reads like a teenage headcannon, one that only sees these women as prizes to be won or tossed aside.
Due diligence would have required that I get an exact number or percentage of dialogue between Roy and his companions that is romance or sex related, but I think that asking me to spend much more time with Mars is a bit cruel. I would estimate that about half of all dialogue with women companions is about romance or sex, with a much smaller percentage for NPCs, who generally only have one or two lines about the proposition. Still, given the extremely limited dialogue available with each character, this ratio turns into a defining aspect of each entity. Which slab of meat looks most appealing to you, sir?
The biggest victim of this specific element is women. For some strange reason, every single woman you speak to in the game offers to have sex with the main character, Roy, implies an offer of sex, or can be “romanced” within three lines of dialogue.
If there is a highlight to Mars (and I use highlight loosely, here), it would be the combat. It is a very active system, with players frantically rolling around to avoid insanely powerful enemies while taking chipshots with your weapons or technomancy. The “fun” of the roly-poly battles is further elevated by the frantic and incoherent meanderings of the camera. One moment, you are staring down a group of enemies, ready to dodge your way into advantageous positions, and the next, the camera has seemingly lost all sense of time and space, staring exactly into the opposite direction you need. Lock-on is of little help here, and even changing targets can be difficult to land on the enemy you want.
Ultimately, Mars: War Logs is a fitting monument to the very colonization dreams it depicts. It is a collection of high-concept ideas that, when stripped of proper execution, collapse into a muddied mess. Half-baked napkin thoughts do not make a good space mission plan, nor do they make a decent video game. Inevitably, problems will arise. Whether it’s a life-support failure in a vacuum or a T-posing glitch in a digital work camp, something will go wrong in the use of technology. Is there a plan to address these concerns? Was there ever a real plan at all? All of this is to say: taking a trip to Mars (or Mars) won’t do you any good, and will serve only to inflate the egos of the fools who put you there.
I'm pretty sure they did not pay for this likeness.
Verdict Don’t go to Mars. That would be a very stupid thing to do, voluntarily.  |
Image Credits: Focus Entertainment