After being unveiled and later suffering a delay, Deliver Us Mars is available to play today. For those who are unaware this is a sequel to Deliver Us The Moon. Both games are puzzle adventure games set in an apocalyptic future. In that, you play a lone astronaut. They went to the moon to help save the human race from extinction. Now as we told you when we brought the news of the sequel, it’s set a decade after the events on the Moon. If we look at the official website it tells us more about the sequel. They state it’s “an atmospheric sci-fi adventure taking you on a suspense-fuelled, high-stakes mission to recover the ARK colony ships stolen by the mysterious Outward”.
I was a huge fan of the original game so what was promised with the sequel? So let’s look at the features for Deliver Us Mars
Deliver Us Mars Game Features
- A Bold New Mission – Ten years after the Fortuna mission, humanity is closer than ever to extinction. After a mysterious distress call from Mars, Earth’s youngest astronaut Kathy Johanson joins the Zephyr and its crew on one last mission: to recover the ARK colony ships stolen by the mysterious Outward, and with them, ensure the survival of the human race.
- Out Of This World Gameplay – Board the Zephyr as you journey from Earth to the surface of Mars. Traverse and endure its harsh and unforgiving terrain as you quest to discover the secrets left behind by Outward. Use both brains and brawn to overcome mental and physical challenges, find the ARKs, and uncover the motivations of those behind the distress call that brought you here.
- A Handcrafted Experience – Experience a highly polished and absorbing narrative experience packed with engaging gameplay. Every moment is handcrafted, delivering a suspense-filled, emotion-fuelled narrative alongside music from award-winning composer Sander Van Zanten, state-of-the-art motion capture, stunning graphics, and real-time ray-traced shadows and reflections, powered by Unreal Engine.
A Martian Experience – A Positive Tale
So if you played the original you will know what to expect. It is more of the same with some new tweaks and more challenging puzzles thrown in. I played through the game on PlayStation 5 and here’s a sample of gameplay
Story
Like the original I found the story gripping and engaging. I never felt the pace was wrong. I found it flowed really well and never had me wondering if the game was close to the end. So factor in looking for collectibles you have a play around the 7-10 hour mark. We have strong characters and the game meets its promise of “delivering a suspense-filled, emotion-fuelled narrative”. There is lots of emotion packed in this story which tied in with the suspense and intrigue. In ways, it feels superior to its predecessor. However, in others, it seemed to fall short. Though it’s very much a solid point for the game. I would have preferred a bit more in-depth to the characters and the world
Gameplay
Like the original, Deliver Us Mars is a puzzle adventure. So we have some puzzles to solve which at times are more challenging than the original. They aren’t too taxing but solutions aren’t always immediately obvious. The platforming isn’t too problematic and works well though the climbing mechanics were frustrating at times. The scan objects for part of the collectibles need improving. Sometimes I’d see a prompt to scan an item so I’d press the relevant button and it actually didn’t scan or record as scanned and couldn’t be scanned again
Audio
The score blends well with the narrative. It really creates a world steeped in mystery and suspense which sums up the story. The sound effects are well-designed. So using the pickaxe when climbing is a good example If you’re outside climbing a wall and strike metal, it will give an expected metallic sound, Do the exact same in a cavern, it sounds louder with more reverb and a dense feel as the sound would when filling the space. Voice acting is well done and the actors portray the emotions well. Sadly audio didn’t match the visual when characters spoke once or twice, albeit a slight discrepancy and the musical score could use a touch more variety.
Graphics
I’ll cast your mind back to the game features. We were told the game promises “state-of-the-art motion capture, stunning graphics, and real-time ray traced shadows and reflections, powered by Unreal Engine”. So I’ll start by bringing you a video showing what the game looks like when we look at screenshots.
Here we see alongside the gameplay in action we do indeed have ray-traced shadows and some excellent reflections on metallic floors. Compared to the ray tracing on the PlayStation 5 upgrade for Deliver Us The Moon, it’s a definite upgrade. So what we were promised can definitely be seen. The motion capture seems to produce a more realistic and fluid character movement.
We were also promised stunning graphics and that’s evident in the trailers. For example, let’s look at some of the Martian landscape.
So we see in the game it produces stunning visuals. Then we look at the character models.
This is just one example but the facial detail on characters is far from stunning. It really takes from the game experience. I could look at games like Red Dead Redemption and I see a better effort at recreating a human face. When we look at the detail of the world, it’s a huge letdown. It was certainly not what I expected to see when loading the game. The building interiors though texture wise don’t seem to offer much of an improvement over the original which is also a shame.
A Martian Sequel Worth The Time – Let’s Find Out
Yes, the game has niggles, especially visually. However, as a complete product, it was very playable and the story and gameplay kept everything together. The audio issues and gameplay ones could potentially be fixed in a patch. If you really loved the first game then I do recommend but I would recommend getting it at a sale price. As the downsides could really be off-putting especially when some are visual issues.
Deliver Us Mars
$29.99 / £24.99
