Deliver Us Mars

by Aethyna Feb 13, 2023 | 1 Votes | 26 Played | 0 Reviews

10 rate

Genres:

Adventure

Graphics:

Labels:

Adventure , Futuristic Setting , Sci-Fi , Space Games

Platforms:

Publishers:

Frontier Foundry Deliver Us Mars is the highly-anticipated sequel to the breakout narrative-driven adventure game, Deliver Us the Moon. In this emotionally-charged sequel, the story is set after the events that happened in the first game, where humanity’s impending doom has been postponed for a good few years, thanks to Rolf. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Deliver Us Mars is the highly-anticipated sequel to the breakout narrative-driven adventure game, Deliver Us the Moon. In this emotionally-charged sequel, the story is set after the events that happened in the first game, where humanity’s impending doom has been postponed for a good few years, thanks to Rolf. However, Earth continues to deteriorate and the surviving people are getting increasingly restless. Something must be done to save the planet and the human race!

Plotline

There’s no need to play the first game in the series to enjoy the story in Deliver Us Mars, despite the story being set in the aftermath of the story of the first game with plenty of flashbacks, both holographic and otherwise to provide more context to the incidences that happened leading up to the mission you find yourself on.

In this game, you play as Kathy Johanson, MPT engineer extraordinaire, youngest sister of one of WSA’s greatest astronauts, Claire Johanson, and youngest daughter of ex-Lunar Council member and Outward’s top scientist, Isaac Johanson, who was labelled, along with other Outward leaders and members as humanity’s greatest betrayers as they took what is supposed to be the salvation for the people that were left behind on Earth, the three ARK spaceships, and ventured off into space, writing off all who remained on Earth as lost causes.

As predicted by William McArthur, the leader of Outward, the conditions on Earth deteriorate further, despite the sacrifices Rolf made in the first game to save it. One day, a mysterious signal was received by the WSA that was determined to have come from the Outward traitor. Kathy heard her nickname within the jumbled, unintelligible message – the very nickname her dad had given to her since she was a young child. Determined to find her dad, Kathy convinced her way into the expedition that was sent to investigate the signal, despite being only a teen and a WSA trainee, albeit a very promising one.

The expedition, was led by none other than her older sister, Claire, consists of other high-ranking WSA astronauts, including Sarah Baker from the first game, and Ryan Delyanin. Their mission? To retrieve the ARKs and any technologies that Outward might have developed that could save Earth, and humanity, from completely dying out. However, fate has much more in store for the crew, and especially for Kathy when she found herself stranded on Mars.

All in all, this sequel did a pretty good job filling the player in, so that they have an idea of what had happened and why it is important to this second part of the series. However, personally, I would highly recommend checking out Deliver Us the Moon first before playing this sequel. It’s just right to experience the story the way it is supposed to be enjoyed, and the kind of revelations you get from this game would definitely make a lot more sense.

Gameplay

As a story-driven walking simulation game, Deliver Us Mars has a very simple gameplay loop – complete the objectives listed and push the story forward. The objectives vary from location to location, some of which may require some simple puzzle solving. For instance, you may be asked to connect STREAME points to activate machines like MPTs or to open doors, or you may be asked to talk to a certain character.

This sequel also features some similar mechanics that made Deliver Us the Moon so interesting and unique, giving players the chance to go through the launching sequence of a spacecraft and experience, albeit virtually, the feeling of being launched into space. You even get to dock a space shuttle yourself too, which can be fun despite requiring a sizeable amount of patience. Similar to the game before, you get a drone called an ASE which you can take control of from time to time to solve sections of a puzzle that you, as a human, can’t, such as going into small vents and unlocking ASE-only points.

Deliver Us Mars doesn’t just retain unique game mechanics from its predecessor; it also adds new puzzles, such as the hologram puzzle. Frankly speaking, the hologram puzzle is possibly one of the most challenging puzzles in this game. Although the premise of the puzzle is simple enough – you just need to slot in all the bits into the orb to complete it, it’s easier said than done sometimes.

Of course, as with before, the game features some short thrilling sequences that some would liken to quick-time events or QTEs. For these scenes, you’ll be expected to do what is needed within a very short time limit. If you can’t make it, thankfully, the game doesn’t really penalizes you. You simply get to do a rerun of that scene until you finally make it.

This game features a new game mechanism as well – climbing, ala Tomb Raider-style. It’s serviceable, but it can be a bit hard to get used to it, especially when you have to jump from one wall to another while still clinging onto your climbing/ice axes.

Similar to the first game, this sequel also has a lot of collectibles, from important mementos (that come with description text that explain their importance) to chat logs between crew, to even everyone’s comic series, Moonman and its “sequel”, Marsman, that you can find and collect, greatly rewarding players who not only follow the linear storyline but took the time to really explore each location.

As much fun as Deliver Us Mars is to play, the game has plenty of aspects that unfortunately breaks the immersion it tries so hard to encapsulate. For instance, at the very beginning, I fell from the ladder I was supposed to climb, but I ended up alright on the platform below. Once you reached the WSA HQ, where there are NPCs abound, you’ll quickly realized that the NPCs are basically statues. I literally get right up in the face of an NPC at the WSA HQ and he just stared stonily back at me. He didn’t even flinch. Due to this, the world feels not as lively as I’d hoped. This might be something that the development team might want to improve on, in the name of sustaining the game’s immersion.

That being said, I applaud the decision to go third-person this time around. I’ve had some incredible motion sickness from playing Deliver Us the Moon that I, gratefully, didn’t have to experience in this sequel.

Graphics/ Sound

The graphics in this sequel have seen an impressive improvement since its sequel. The game also features a lot of eye-candy sceneries that you’d love to take screenshots of. As a narrative-heavy walking sim, the game has plenty of cutscenes where your role is to simply sit back and enjoy the story.

In terms of sound, Deliver Us Mars has some quality voice acting, sound effects, music, and ambiance, that really immerse the player into the events and scenes that are unfolding on screen. The cutscenes are all really well done too, with excellent animation – was done via motion capture, by the way - and dialogues.

Conclusion

To put it simply, Deliver Us Mars is an incredible sequel to what is a fantastic, story-rich, adventure-driven walking sim, Deliver Us the Moon. The intriguing story continues with Kathy Johanson as she joins her sister, Claire, and other experienced astronauts from the WSA to investigate what happened to the Outward crew and their traitorous yet ambitious plan to start anew. So much has been improved since the original breakout title, including the graphics and animations, and the story is brilliantly told, even for players who haven’t experienced the first game.