Space: the final frontier. Its vast expanse has, over time, played host to all manner of weird and wonderful ‘aliens’ and ‘monsters.’ Such forms of fantastic fiction have existed since the mid-1900s, and have produced some of the greatest films and video games It is, therefore, perfectly understandable – desirable, even – to find a game which is set in an overrun Martian habitat. Better, yet, one overrun by zombies. The AI trying to kill you, all the while, only makes it sound better.
It was quite a surprise, then, when the best part of the game was the first five seconds, before one realizes just how impressively the creator managed to ruin such a cool concept.
Indeed, such a premise does give the devs a high amount of pressure toward providing a high-quality, fun, action-packed game. Unfortunately, for the players, whilst it is true that - on occasion - pressure does make diamonds, this game seems to be more content to prove that pressure is also good at making garbage more compact. (Note: Somehow, it’s still a 5GB game.)
The game, visually, looks great - but beauty is only skin deep and there are many deep-rooted, glaring issues that make the game difficult to play. If you accidentally flip your [strike]car[/strike] Mars Rover, you have to WALK to the next objective. There is nothing interesting, in the space between objectives.
The maths questions feel rather tacked onto the game, with no real thought given to the pacing or what they add to the gameplay. Also, perhaps I'm just an idiot, but it feels as though the number of people who need to do primary school maths and want to play a gritty shooter on Mars is roughly equivalent to the number of Ethiopians looking for weight-loss programs.
Overall, I'd say it's a pretty solid 5-out-of-5.
