Monuments of Mars came bundled with a 32 game collection of Apogee games called "3D Realms Anthology - Steam Edition" released back in 2015. The original game was released in 1990 for DOS (I never played back then). I got the anthology on the winter sale for $9.99, that's 31 cents per game! That was such an awesome deal that I had to buy it, because there were some games in the anthology that I wanted anyway (Duke Nukem games, Shadow Warrior, and a few other FPS games). I didn't know it at the time, but this was a limited release for Steam. I don't think there's anyway to buy it now on Steam, but you can get it for free on 3DRealms website since March of 2009. So basically I paid 31 cents to have a free game integrated into Steam. I wish I could do that with any PC game that's not on Steam as there are quite a lot of them I'm interested in. Monuments of Mars is the oldest game that was part of the anthology and the oldest game in my Steam library. There was no way to purchase it separately, which is odd because it has its own store page, forum, ect...
This game runs through DOSBox and despite the store page saying that it only has partial Xbox 360 controller support, DOSBox allows you to map any key on the keyboard to the XBox 360 controller making it fully playable without a keyboard. By default the only things mapped on the controller are A for jumping, Left and Right on both the d-pad and left analogue stick to move left and right, Y for Yes, and Back for the Quit prompt. I mapped L3 for restoring a save prompt, R3 for saving prompt, and B for No. The game installation takes up 26.7MB in the steamapps\common folder, but the game itself is less than 1MB. The rest is just the manual and DOSBox. This game is available for both Windows and Mac, but not on SteamOS/Linux. Though I'm pretty sure you can use DOSBox in Linux and even Android. The system requirements are greatly exaggerated. If your PC or device can run DOSbox, you should be ale to play this game just fine.
It would be extremely unfair to rate this game by today's standards, because if I or most people did, they would call it a piece of crap made by some noob. However, because I know that it was made when PC gaming wasn't exactly as awesome as it is now, I'll give it a fair review. Oddly enough, even though this game was released in a time were home consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master system were around, Monuments of Mars feels and looks like an early arcade game that was made and released before those two game consoles were even in existence. So for me the game feels even older than it actually is. I could never genuinely enjoy games from that era (mostly due to crap controls, not graphics) especially since I didn't grow up in that period. If you grew up playing this type of game maybe you can enjoy it. I don't find any game fun if the controls just plain suck. The farthest back I can go in terms of games and actually have fun is the NES and SMS, anything prior to that feels really ancient to me.
I've bought many games on Steam since I first opened my account and have never played the majority of them because I became obsessed with Left 4 Dead and ignored all my other games. Recently I've heard of some games being removed from Steam, but you could still play it if you already purchased it (Wolfenstein 2009 version is an example), and then I've read about a few cases where games have been removed from Steam entirely even if you purchased it and you can no longer play it (that's really sucks). Since you can't purchase the 3D Realms Anthology or Monuments of Mars on Steam any longer, I decided to start playing all my games in my Steam Library while I still have them. I'm starting with the oldest to the newest because if I do it the other way around, I won't be able to stand most of the older games.
Monuments of Mars isn't a bad game, but it has not aged well at all and it can't compare to many console games of the time or any game today. It does have some good ideas which I did find interesting so I supposed a modern day remake could actually do well as a quick time killer on a web browser on mobile device. The problem is that it was just made for crappy hardware with even crappier controls. The controls are choppy and moving/jumping feels both stiff and like your under water, which makes the game seem a lot harder than it actually should be. You jump incredibly fast yet fall much slower. If you couldn't save in this game and it had a traditional amount of lives and continues from games of this time, I don't think I would have had the patience to play the game in its entirety because sometimes the crappy controls make this game down right frustrating. I know for a fact I would not have enjoyed this game back in the day unless it ran and controlled as smooth as an NES or SMS game of that time, which most DOS games that I have ever played do not. If you want a difficult challenge and want to test your patience/skills, then play this game. You play as an astronaut sent on a mission to rescue other astronauts that have gone missing on Mars. Though there's one particular astronaut that you can't rescue/save because he/she gets crushed to death (didn't think I'd see something like that from a game this old). The store page description about there being only 20 levels is not accurate. There's 4 chapters and each one has 20 levels for a total of 80 (3 of which are repeated and 1 which you don't actually play, so the real total is 76). Each level consists of a single screen in which you walk, jump over obstacles, enemies, platform, traps, ect... Your only weapon is a laser gun with limited ammo, which means that you can't kill every enemy in the game. You have to use your ammo strategically and even activate some buttons/switches by shooting them. When you finish one chapter of 20 levels, you must quit and exit the game and relaunch it to load another chapter (or at least I didn't find a way to do that otherwise). I actually finished all 80 levels in 5 hours (the other 2 hours I have on record I either stepped away from the PC or was messing around with the DOSbox settings or forcing myself to get accustomed to the crappy controls). It was not an easy game to finish and I have no plans on playing it ever again.
If you think that the controls of a game like this can't be fixed, let me tell you this: I could never play the original Donkey Kong arcade game from 1981 and have fun with it due to the incredibly stiff controls which killed the fun factor for me. I don't know how there's people that still play that game to this day (maybe because I didn't grow up during that era). However, the remake of the Donkey Kong arcade game for the Game Boy in 1994 improves the controls tremendously and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. If they gave Monuments of Mars that same type treatment for the controls, I would actually play this game again. Some music wouldn't hurt either since Monuments of Mars only as sound effects.
So do I recommend it? Yes. Why? Because you can play the whole game without installation issues or crashes, which is more of what can be said of some more modern titles. If you plan on playing it, save when you reach a new level and bring LOTS of patience with you. If you can't do that, don't play it.
The next oldest game in the anthology is Pharaoh's Tomb which I'll play next. It already looks similar to Monuments of Mars, oh boy.....
