Mars: War Logs

Game is great, story is really good, combat is engaging. Your choices actually matter. Characters are memorable, especially main guy - love him. I don't really recall when was the last time I had that feeling of changing world, that feel of meaning something - this game does it really well. It's budget RPG, but still succeds in giving you a lot of fun. I absolutely recommend.

I have played now Greedfall, The Technomancer, Mars: War Logs, Bound by flame and just finished Of Orcs and Men, in this order. Mars: War logs was the weakest of them. Game mechanics felt rather old fashioned and there is a lot of backtracking, and the same enemies respawning every time you leave an area is quite unnecessary. For a Spiders game, the characters were, with the exception of Roy, rather dull. Play time was rather short, but for 5 Euros it was ok. I wouldn't play it again but I do not regret the time, it was entertaining enough.

Mars: War Logs, clearly borrows from better games and although it won't set the world on fire, it is solid enough to get a few hours of entertainment from. You start the game in a POW camp and are swifty introduced to the main character Roy as he rescues a new immate from the less than romantic attentions of a fellow prisoner. After this "edgy" but oh so cheesy opening, you are tasked with attempting to escape from the prison whilst completing numerous side quests. As to the side quests, they don't offer much and most of them revolve around collecting X amount of Y or hitting people until they stop moving. I won't go to much into the story, not because I will spoil it, but because it isn't something that hasn't been done a million times before. It is not that it is bad as such, it is just very generic and uninspired. Although, the game has RPG elements, they are fairly basic and amount to upgrading a couple of dozen skills and some item crafting but most of the skills have little impact on game play and you can get through most of the game without needing to craft anything, The combat, like much of the game has been done before and if you have played any action game in the last 10 years you should pick it up instantly. You can perform a couple of types of attack, block, use hot key special moves and roll, oh how you can roll. They do attempt to spice up the fighting by giving you the option to issue commands to NPCs who are with you, but I never used it. But, it is there I suppose. Overall, Mars: War Logs is an average game but it makes a good distraction and there is the skeleton of a good game buried within it, and for a budget title, you could do a lot worse.

I acquired this game for a few Euro in a GOG weekly sale, and for the price I was in no way disappointed. I have dual operating systems, (Win 7 & Fedora Linux) and although many of the games are classed as Windows only, I like to give them a shot on Linux with WINE first out of curiosity; more often than not they run nicely. MWL wasn't an exception it worked great with the one drawback that all of the subs and interface were in Spanish :)) There were no installation problems with either OS. The Game itself was as others have said, a bit repetitive and there is a lot of backtracking which might annoy seasoned players but may actually be comfortable for newbies as would the decent tutorial, mapping and auto-saves. The dialogue wasn't too bad and the narrative whilst cliched was mostly passable. All in all, it's never going to be a GOTY but would not be a disgrace as a nice little stocking filler well worth buying when on special offer.

Mars: War Logs is a game with small areas (reminded me of Deus Ex: Invisible War) where you do some parts then having to go to another area to do the quests. It can become tideous sometimes as you may have to run back and forth between some areas a lot and enemies respawning. Thou the environment, characters and the story is what I enjoyed. Can be some really bad puns and such but that what made me like it. You can have an attitude or be nice. Combat is a bit wonky but works fine when you get the hang of it. Will thou warn you if you play on the hardest difficulty(extreme) be ready to kite a lot and do hit and run tactics. Ranged enemies will be the nemesis. Overall thou I did enjoy it but yes the combat can be wonky and the running back and forth can be tedious, especially when you may have to fight the same respawned enemies several times.