Memories of Mars Review

I emerge in the opening minutes of Memories of Mars as a nameless clone on a silent red planet. There are labs, utilitarian living spaces and clinical greenhouses dotting the horizon: all the signs of a flourishing colonisation effort, except without any people. A disembodied voice greets me; it tells of a disastrous fate for the long-dead colonists and asks me to uncover the details of how they met their end. That’ll have to wait though: it’s getting dark, and without shelter I won’t last long enough to see morning, let alone solve the colony’s tragic mystery. With several of the tools scavenged from the cloning facility that birthed me, I start work on constructing a rudimentary base and begin my journey of survival and discovery on the merciless surface of Mars.

It’s during my first building project, a soulless metallic hut, that the skeleton of Memories of Mars makes itself abundantly clear. This is an online, open world crafting game that plays things by the genre-defined rules and makes little attempt to inject anything resembling excitement or novelty into the proceedings. Much like the game’s world, it’s bland, empty and monotonous. As I dash around, collecting the abundant iron ore and refining it into—one of the most basic building materials—iron blocks, the next 10, 20, 30 hours of gameplay unfurl before me like an ugly, dusty antique rug. Peeling through the various, mostly locked, items on each crafting menu and character skill tree further prove my assumptions to be correct. Building up this base and acquiring the increasingly rare materials to improve it will be an equal, if not dominant focus to the overarching mystery presented at the beginning. This isn’t necessarily a negative—plenty of great games shirk story in favour of mechanics—it’s made tedious by the lack of variety in the crafting recipes on offer. Initially, I assumed my Martian abode looked so dull because I hadn’t unlocked the ‘exciting’ options yet, but no: aside from their shape, size and maybe colour, all player-created buildings look pretty much identical. Where’s the motivation to endlessly hunt for resources when the starting shack is a decent approximation of what the end-game fortress will look like?

With that said, the act of construction is genuinely simple and intuitive, despite the end result looking like a glorified tin can. Choosing a building component—walls, floors, doors, machines or defences etc.—displays an in-game hologram of that component which can then be ‘stamped’ in place. Then, with a separate device, crafting materials can be ‘fed’ into the hologram which builds it for real. It’s easy, all the pieces snap together without any fuss and it’s certainly not overly complex—something I can appreciate. With the early construction tools, however, building is arbitrarily slowed-down: it takes time to ‘feed’ the components into the hologram which can be tedious when there’s a lot to be built. This is just about tolerable with some friends to chat with or a podcast to listen to, but a game shouldn’t rely on its players providing their own entertainment to keep from getting bored. It’s one thing to supplement a fun but mindless game with ‘background entertainment’, but doing the same with a boring and mindless game is no more than patching the holes in a leaky ship.

After getting myself set up with a home and the means to craft my way up the progression ladder thanks to the first few ‘Protocols’ (essentially tutorial quests that guide a player through the game’s mechanics), I begin to trek further out of the starting zone. It soon becomes clear that all is not friendly on Mars, and I’ll need protection—guns and armour—if I’m to defend myself from the AI controlled robotic arachnid enemies that patrol the game’s loot-filled locations and the supposed threat from other online players. There’s a multitude of weapons and weapon types in Memories of Mars, each with alternative ammo types to boot; unfortunately, this good news is hampered by the fact that all the weapons feel about as powerful as a BB gun bought second-hand from a car boot sale. Aiming is floaty and imprecise, at least on Xbox with a controller, and the various upgrades do little to improve things. It’s not as if combat can be avoided either: the enemies are plentiful and destroying them is a good source of Flops, the in-game currency used to upgrade gear and components.

Several hours later, I find myself sinking into the Memories of Mars rhythm. Wandering, looting, shooting, building and occasionally reading text logs left by the ex-inhabitants of the abandoned colony. Although none of the game’s individual elements are particularly polished or gripping—and the barren environment only becomes more of an eyesore over time—there’s a certain appeal to working up its tech tree. Of course, the same can be said for countless games with the same ‘hierarchical’ recipe crafting structure, but it’s worth highlighting how there is fun to be had in Memories of Mars if you—ideally with a friend or two—can withstand the clunky and monotonous elements.

If you’ve paid any attention to the gaming industry over the last five or six years, you know what to expect here: an online, base building survival game in the vein of Rust or ARK: Survival Evolved. There’s nothing novel with this release; much like the droning ten-note melody that punctuates the menus and all too much of the gameplay, it’s repetitious and bland. Had it been released years ago like its competitors and benefited from years of updates and improvements, it might be in a more polished position now and worthy of a player’s time. As it stands, however, Memories of Mars asks for too much player commitment and offers too little in return. Whichever platform you own, there’s better ways to get your online survival fix.