This was the only Lucasarts point'n'click I didn't play as a kid so it does not provoke the same nostalgia attached to it as the others, and I probably had quite high expectations going into it. This was the first game with the SCUMM interface and is a bridge between the era of super-hard interactive fiction games and much more user-friendly point'n'click adventures, and it shows. It's old school. The gameplay is quite simply, incredibly frustrating. There are no 'look at' or 'talk to' commands so most of the hints for more unusual puzzles are hidden in the newspaper and hint book provided as PDFs, rather than emerging naturally in the course of play. You have four player characters: two on Earth and two on Mars, and for most of the puzzles one character would be enough but you have to switch quite a lot between them because they interact slightly differently with certain items. Save frequently. If you take the wrong action and use up a necessary item, you can get stuck and be completely unable to complete the game. There are also the ever-frustrating mazes. But what really sucked the fun out of the game is that the two characters on Earth have to travel between about 10 different locations across the globe by buying plane tickets. If you take the wrong route, or have to retrace your steps to get an item, you can end up running out of money and having to return to an earlier save. It's the kind of game where you need a notebook and pen to hand. If you want to solve it without a walkthrough too much, I recommend writing down any numbers, code sequences, or diagrams you come across. You should also map out the locations and flight routes between them and make notes on what you find at each location so you can puzzle things out with going to and fro too much. If you stick with it, it'll be very rewarding, just don't expect the same experience as Maniac Mansion or Monkey Island.
