Deliver Us Mars review: a grueling space journey

The question of the arduousness of jobs is a subject which, let’s be honest, does not really concern a video game tester. Nevertheless, just for having gone to the end of Deliver Us MarsI believe that I deserve one or two quarters of pension contribution offered, so much I left emptied of these ten or so hours of play. However, a priori, nothing predestined this continuation of Deliver Us the Moon to become such a Way of the Cross.

In case you didn’t at the time, this was an exploration game with an intimate mix of storytelling and thinking. He made us search space stations to discover a cleverly cut story. There were also a few environmental puzzles and riddles to overcome. Despite an obviously reduced budget and the constraints of a very small team, this first draft skilfully managed to offer a great variety of situations, with even a few spectacular scenes that caught us in a mysterious and rather breathless story. Quite the opposite of Deliver Us March…

In space, no one will hear you sigh…

On paper, Deliver Us Mars is a direct sequel that seeks to build on the successes of its predecessor, while trying to gain momentum by adding new features. The concern is that it more or less fails on both counts. We find this realistic science fiction story that projects us a few decades into the future. Everything starts from an Earth devastated by climatic catastrophes and where humanity, on the verge of extinction, only gets what it deserves. All hopes are pinned on the mission of three astronauts sent to Mars to try and get their hands on groundbreaking technology developed by former Moon colonists. Our young heroine, Kathy, is part of this trio of lucky and Deliver Us Mars takes the opportunity to tell a much more intimate story, fed by a few flashbacks and a host of overly syrupy and conventional sketches.

The adventure itself paraphrases enormously Deliver Us the Moon, to the point of resuming construction and copying and pasting entire game phases – like the rocket take-off sequences which clearly lose their intensity. But, oddly, this sequel fails to find the intelligence of its model in the exploration and the puzzles that are posed there, without the slightest logic in relation to the narration and the setting. The new gameplay mechanic based on light beams to be aimed at receivers is the perfect example of this. What sane engineer would design such an abstruse locking system? I would still prefer to look for secret codes written on post-it notes stuck here and there… The game abuses them so much that it creates systems that have neither meaning nor sense, to the point that their resolution is no longer rewarding. We just feel relieved to finally be able to move on.

Welcome to 2009

But the biggest concern Deliver Us Mars, it is certainly his achievement. Let’s be clear, it does not matter to assume a certain sobriety from this point of view. By telling myself that I am having a kind of retrogaming experience, I can agree to play on my PS5 in 2023 a game that looks like something ugly, dating from the PS3/Xbox 360 era. is that there is a total dissonance between the studio’s ambitions for this episode and the means deployed. While Deliver Us the Moon skillfully hid its weaknesses, this sequel exposes them in broad daylight, like its characters modeled with a chisel and whose facial animations are almost impossible to decipher. Yet, obviously proud, the game exhibits them at the slightest opportunity – as if we were in a production of Hideo Kojima or Naughty Dog.

Deliver Us Mars also adds a lot of platform phases, again, convinced that he has the quality of I-don’t-know-what Tomb Raider. But with its weird physics engine (and not just due to the planet’s gravity), invisible walls that betray a level design wobbly and, above all, a handling of an unnamed rigidity, the frustration prevails very quickly. This is particularly the case during the climbing passages, another great novelty of the game. Beyond the animations, the mechanics based on the coordinated use of the two triggers (one for each ice axe) hit the system quickly and s bogged down in very heavy sequences (in particular a certain ice cave which tests our reflexes as much as our nerves).

Fortunately, the know-how and the good will of the developers still know how to show through at times in Deliver Us Mars. The game always offers this unique sensation of exploring credible places, in a setting that sometimes suggests striking landscapes. The trips in weightlessness or in the ocher-colored canyons swept by violent winds have their small effect and the assembly of the pieces of the narrative puzzle is still pleasant. There is somewhere, under a thick layer of orange dust, a title full of potential. KeokeN Interactive is just fifteen years late, that’s all.

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