Video Game Review: Deliver Us Mars

cover art for Deliver us Mars

Released: 2023

System: PC - Epic

Genre: SciFi, Story-based

My Rating: 3/5 stars

I currently base my reviews loosely around the CAWPILE system developed by Book Roast on YouTube. I modify the categories depending on the format of the story I’m reviewing.

My star ratings are purely by my opinion and not measured by any particular metric.

SPOILER WARNING: This review will contain spoilers! Proceed with caution!

Summary

Deliver Us Mars is 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.

Characters

Not as good this time around. Kathy was framed at the start as a rebel with attitude, but the farther we went, the less personality she had. It was weird. Sarah, though, was irritating to the max. For whatever reason, she blamed Kathy for what Isaac did and had no compassion for her. Her turn at the end was not very earned. Poor Ryan is constantly caught between them and tries to keep the peace. Claire was more compelling and convincing as a headless voice in the first one. Isaac is unrepentant and crazy. He could have done more to help avoid the riots, but he refused to take a stand one way or another.

Atmosphere

Once again, we’re exploring a seemingly abandoned colony, trying to find out what happened to the people. Beautiful graphics, cool environment. There was something a little lacking, like they could have expanded more world exploration or something. It did get more and more unsettling the more you learned and the farther you went.

Game Mechanics/Gameplay

They start out okay. Walk, run, drone. The first person zero-G was just like the first one.

AND THEN THERE’S THE CLIMBING.

If I never have to do manual axe rock climbing again, it’ll be too soon. I hated it, it wasn’t smooth, wasn’t fun, and did not add much to the story. The hacking puzzles were really obtuse and I had to look them up.

Could have been much better.

Plot

Aside from a few things like playing as Kathy and it being 10 years later, the story itself is about what I expected. It wasn’t as good as the first. For example, the death of Claire had absolutely no impact on me. I didn’t care. And the way they had her just freeze was dumb. She didn’t try to comfort her sister or anything. The colonists they eventually did find were crazy. And then the end implied that Earth was fallen, so it was all for naught.

Intrigue

Natural mystery of trying to figure out what happened. Just okay.

Logic

Future pseudo-science. Fine. Understandable enough.

Enjoyment

I was very disappointed with this one. In addition to things mentioned above, it got really preachy at the end. Some throughout as well. That combined with the weak story, poor characters, and stupid climbing mechanics, I will not be playing this one again.

Would I Recommend?

Not really. If you absolutely must play out the continuation of the story of the first game, go for it, but I don’t think it is nearly as well done as the first one, which is a shame, because it had potential.