I cherished Ship Us the Moon. I assumed it was completely paced and full of partaking set items, tons of selection, and an enthralling story. Quite the opposite, I similar to Ship Us Mars. It very a lot builds on the plotting of its predecessor, provides new gameplay mechanics, and incorporates a a lot bigger price range. However its pacing can’t match the final sport, it has some vexing bugs, and the repetition of the climbing and puzzle sections saved it from fulfilling my expectations. It’s positively price taking part in for followers however it merely isn’t as gratifying an expertise.
Ship Us Mars switches protagonists, which gained’t come as a shock for the reason that final sport ended with its lead perishing after succeeding in his mission. You play as Kathy Johanson, daughter of Isaac and sister of Claire from Ship Us the Moon. After Claire rescues Sarah Baker from cryo, she’s in a position to efficiently save Kathy from Isaac in his try to load her onto an ark and flee to hitch the remainder of Outward. Now an grownup, Kathy joins Claire, Sarah, and Sarah’s husband Ryan on a trek to Mars to search out out what occurred to Outward and produce the arks to Earth in an effort to save the planet from its existential disaster.
The story stays partaking, solely it’s introduced differently. The earlier sport didn’t have the cash for character faces and cutscenes, so the story was utterly delivered by holograms and audio information. Ship Us Mars has character fashions for your complete essential solid, plus bigger, more-detailed areas to maneuver round in. However there’s a giant drawback. The character faces look form of terrible. They’re both bizarre or unusually old-looking and facial animations are lower than stellar.
Screenshot by PC Invasion
What did you do to your hair?
The hair is the worst, although. Once we first meet Kathy as a baby, she has a haircut that appears like she did it herself, because it’s horribly uneven and appears horrible. As an grownup, Kathy bafflingly has the very same haircut together with a bizarre, little sideburn that’s connected to nothing. I used to be shocked no one tried to enhance this earlier than launch. A minimum of the voice appearing is pretty much as good because it was earlier than. The solid does a terrific job of bringing these characters to life, even when a few of them are pretty unlikable. It is a notably longer sport too. Ship Us the Moon is about 5 hours lengthy, whereas Ship Us Mars is round eight-and-a-half. The story comes collectively nicely in the long run, however it positively feels prefer it meanders in comparison with the final go round.
Ship Us Mars has a group of various gameplay kinds. You stroll round and search for issues to work together with, generally float round or swim in first-person, drive a rover, lower issues aside with a laser, climb, platform, and clear up a few varieties of puzzles. However whereas Ship Us the Moon always saved issues contemporary and efficiently made every goal really feel significant, Ship Us Mars is stuffed with fluff that doesn’t really feel wherever close to as important.
That is merely a slower journey versus the tight pacing it’s possible you’ll expect. And there are such a lot of occasions when it’s a must to cease what you’re doing to slowly use pickaxes to climb some partitions or goal a laser to resolve a puzzle. These two issues are regurgitated again and again. The climbing is pretty intelligent even when it’s typically considerably boring. It’s a must to slam each pickaxes right into a wall to climb it earlier than swapping forwards and backwards between them to slowly make headway. However it may be somewhat clunky, particularly with regards to leaping backward. The primary time the sport requested me to do that, I had no thought it was even doable as the sport by no means teaches you about it. I’m not even completely certain the way it works.
Screenshot by PC Invasion
Not one other laser puzzle
However whereas the climbing is tolerable and infrequently accompanied by some pretty concerned platforming sequences, the puzzle-solving is lackluster. Whereas Ship Us the Moon by no means tried to be a Portal-styled puzzler, Ship Us Mars tries its finest to return to that nicely again and again. You’ll sometimes want to chop a number of locks to launch a tool that may shoot a laser to energy up a generator. However this will get extra difficult as the sport goes on, requiring you to make use of splitters and energy dampeners to achieve a number of turbines directly. These puzzles are okay, however they’re not all that enjoyable and there are just too a lot of them.
Then there are the hologram puzzles. Ship Us the Moon had ASE holograms you’d work together with to observe a recording of a scene play out and people return. However now you might want to clear up one-to-three decryption puzzles to view them. These puzzles are pretty poor, as they solely encompass transferring your ASE round to attempt to get three yellow locks to enter a hologram and switch blue. The sport doesn’t even remotely try to elucidate how they work they usually actually haven’t any enterprise being within the sport in any respect.
And that’s the most important drawback with Ship Us Mars. It desires to be a beefier sport, however it pads itself out with meaningless filler to try this, which makes it a far cry from the centered expertise the primary sport supplied. It’s high-quality so far as narrative journey video games go, however the first sport simply felt higher to play. There are additionally a good quantity of bugs that drag issues down. I had crashes in addition to prompts that often didn’t work, requiring me to give up to the menu. On a couple of event, I couldn’t even begin the decryption puzzles to observe holograms. You can even utterly skip the primary main climbing part by fastidiously leaping down a mountain.
Screenshot by PC Invasion
It doesn’t assist that the sport’s characters could be a bit onerous to narrate to and that the rapid targets simply aren’t all that attention-grabbing. I had a reasonably respectable time with the sport general as a result of story, however I can’t assist however really feel upset that the sequel to a sport I cherished a lot simply didn’t hit the identical notes. Followers will discover it price a playthrough however shouldn’t anticipate the identical stage of exhilaration and narrative funding that its predecessor supplied. It was strive, however the devs simply didn’t ship us an equal expertise this time round. Possibly the third sport will get us there.
