Welcome to Mars
Following a virus that has infected the Earth’s population, man has decided to colonize Mars; however, the virus has managed to reach even one of the colonies, and several factions fight each other for a cure. We will interpret the only recruited survivor of the epidemic, and we will have to escape and find a way to put an end to this. In our fight we will be accompanied by Drone Saffron, which will soon prove to be fundamental to our survival.
We start from the assumption that the plot tends to be taken seriously, resulting in more than a fairly trivial occasion and conversations, albeit amusing, between our character and their own drone are not enough to convince us of the goodness of the narrative.
There are two main gameplay modes: Story and Survival, and the first will be essential not only to fully understand all the mechanics that the title has to offer but also to unlock one of the 4 classes in the game, obtainable only after having completed the title with normal difficulty (Soldier).
Ready and loads
Each of the available classes has its own set of skills and enhancements: Assault is the most balanced class of 4, specializing in ammunition management and melee attacks; Demolition will provide greater customization for skill slots and better management of building objects by our drone (such as turrets and barricades, which we can collect and place wherever we want); Hellraiser is a tank that can withstand several damage, but unlike other classes it will not be able to change the secondary weapon, which will always be the flamethrower; Finally, the Terminator (to be unlocked) specializes in so-called “crowd control”, thanks to an increasing use of skills while sacrificing its suit integrity, resulting in the most difficult class to master.
In this title you will need to pay particular attention to the level of threat: it indicates the danger of the enemies we will encounter on our journey and may be increased or decreased depending on our actions.
To influence this special bar will come into play the drone, thanks to the powers that can be upgraded:The Scout will serve to make us have more ammunition, upgrades and devastating weapons, while the Bomb will devastate a devastating explosion throughout the area of our choice, save a safe zone on which we will have to move, but both of these skills increase the level of threat ; to be able to decrease it, we will have to use Block’s skills to slow and block literally hordes of enemies, and Taunt, to attract them instead, but at the cost of seeing other enemies, including mini-bosses, at the same time.
The proper use of these skills is the key to survival on Mars, having to understand when we can afford certain risks and especially where.In the beta we had tried, we talked about how unused ammunition before a refill was wasted: we noticed that this feature was removed, making the game much more similar to today’s regular shootings, but with reserve ammunition always shared between the two weapons.
The choice was probably due to the desire not to make the title too difficult and not to alienate even the base player with less access to these titles, even though we appreciated the originality of the previous system.
I smell infected
The mechanics of the threat serve to provide personalities in this respect with others that are also well-studied and fun to use: what is most noticeable in the survival mode, where we will have to survive hordes of enemies and we will be able to choose when to stop rewards or whether to go on with more ammunition but at the risk of dying.
Unfortunately, the game is also packed with a host of bugs that ruined our experience on more than one occasion: more than fighting the infected we were challenged by the constant bugs that afflicted them, scratching through the walls, mini-bosses who continued to attack even if dead and enemies who, instead of spawning from the ground, attacked us by making counterattacks impossible. Finally, we have lost all the issues we have encountered.
It does not help the fact that in the last half of the story the best strategy was just to escape to get to the checkpoint as soon as possible, making it useless, except for a couple of occasions, all the experience matured before. However, we believe that the title has a great potential and that is still fun for fans and not, but if Ironward developers took a little more time to fix certain issues, it would probably be a better product.
