It’s always more disappointing to play something that’s almost good than something that just flat out sucks. Mars 2120 is a 3D Metroidvania that has a lot going for it due to a wide variety of fun abilities, some neat ideas, and solid graphics. But there are problems. Namely, a huge lack of polish and some incredibly questionable design decisions. I like the game overall, but it isn’t ready for release and certain aspects simply don’t feel like they were even finished. As such, this game is far less than it could have been with some more time and attention.
Mars 2120 tells the story of a woman named Anna. Or Charlotte. Or Thirteen. A brief intro shows her crash landing on Mars. That’s about it for the plot. I had no idea who she was or what she was doing outside of her being some sort of test subject that can breathe in the Martian atmosphere sans helmet. The game is very clearly going for a Metroid feel, as the areas are all broken up on the map and progression is often based on getting different coloured weapons to open corresponding doors.
As for what the game does right, the level design is solid, the visuals are typically well-realised, and the controls feel decent. Charlotte starts the game with a double jump, her rifle, and a surprisingly flashy melee attack system. Progression almost entirely revolves around her finding new elemental cores that add further abilities. These, unsurprisingly, are made up of electric, ice, and fire cores. They can be swapped between on the fly and give Charlotte a different gun, while her melee attacks stay the same, save for the addition of elemental damage.
Enemies are often elemental coded, so you’ll need to choose the right core to fight them, otherwise you’ll end up doing no damage. It’s weird that even physical attacks do no damage if enemies are the same element, but that’s the tip of the strange choice iceberg. The electric core grants an automatic firing rifle, ice is a shotgun, and fire is a flamethrower. The electric gun feels like a peashooter and the flamethrower isn’t all that great. The shotgun has little range outside of shots being charged up, but kicks like a mule. Guns are aimed with the right analog stick and are serviceable enough, but aiming can feel a bit off.
Charlotte’s melee attacks are quick and numerous. She can also attack in the air and there are some launch attacks here and there that add some variability. What’s more, each core has several abilities. The electric core can travel through open electric lines, the ice core freezes water, and the fire core can make red barrels explode, for example. This aspect of the game is well thought out and there’s a good amount of exploring and backtracking for anyone that wants it. Most of what you find are perks and skills that you’ll then need to purchase with experience. Weirdly, Mars 2021 gives you so much experience that I was always able to afford absolutely every perk I’d found. It’s an especially glaring instance of the game’s wonky balance.
You’ll naturally find enemies all over, but there are too few types that are mostly just elemental palette swaps of each other. The most obnoxious of these is probably the insect enemy. The ice version freezes you if it touches you. The electric one, on the other hand, shocks you, which freezes you. They’re both incredibly annoying. Since contact damage with them leaves you so stunned, it’s easy for them to stunlock you to death, which is something I had happen more than once.
The enemies, much like the experience balance, are often also wonky. They’re jittery and oftentimes animate strangely. One common enemy has no frames between its lying down and standing animation, so it just suddenly becomes upright after being knocked down. Enemies clip through geometry weirdly with frequency and fighting them gets pretty old far before the end credits are reached. The absolutely enormous amount of knockback when Charlotte gets hit certainly doesn’t help matters.
The hit detection on the melee attacks just doesn’t really feel as tight as it should, making things feel sloppy. Bosses are also often confusing. Some of them have such little health that you can kill them in seconds. Others have far too much and take several times longer to beat than there’s any good reason for. It’s as if no one play tested some of them enough. It’s not uncommon for early access games without many players giving feedback to have issues like this, but I played the launch build, so that excuse doesn’t hold up.
Content has been added to the game as time’s gone on, but that’s led to yet another issue for Mars 2120. Since it’s so unclear what your goal is, I just followed the general progression via the destination markers. At one point late-game, I was fighting a boss that looked like a knock-off terminator. Once I beat it, an achievement popped telling me I’d beaten the game. I had no idea it was the final boss and even less of an idea as to what it was. I can’t recall a time that’s happened before. It was as if the game just stopped suddenly, which is no doubt due to the game’s early access nature. It really felt like a boss was slapped onto the end and that was it. It was horribly anticlimactic and the game ends very shortly after you complete the fire core’s ability set, which makes the melee combat more fun than ever. What a waste.
Unsurprisingly, there are some bugs and general odd behaviour here and there. There’s one spot in an area where, if you dodge roll into it, Charlotte will get stuck in a series of roll animations, hardlocking you. The game is obsessed with instadeaths due to falling in pits instead of just resetting the player, which is horribly aggravating. When you fall into a pit, the camera follows for a bit, even showing parts of the area the player isn’t meant to see, such as the void at the bottom of said pit. I also unlocked abilities that required me to press two buttons simultaneously, but I could never get them to work, which was bizarre.
Occasionally, Mars 2021 thinks you need to wander in a confusing maze, such as a pitch black one that refuses to give you a map where I got lost for a time. There’s also a fast travel system, but using this hits you with two loading screens and an animation. There’s no good reason for much of this, it just makes fast traveling more tedious.
The game took me about eight hours and I truthfully didn’t have a bad time. The game isn’t poor, it just needed a lot more work, from balance, to animation, to story, and setting up the final area. It scratches the Metroidvania itch nicely and many of its ideas are interesting enough, but the lack of polish, monotonous enemy encounters, and odd design decisions keep it from reaching as high as it might have otherwise.
Mars 2120: Solid in some spots and lacking in multiple others, Mars 2120 offers some satisfying Metroidvania actions on occasion, while giving way to sloppiness and frustration the rest of the time. – Andrew Farrell
More of our latest reviews:
Earth Defense Force 6 PC review – The same as the last one | Anger Foot PC review – Diving in feet first | Fallen Leaf PC review – 8-bit ecstasy |
