Mars 2120 review

It’s not hard to see where QUByte Interactive were going with Mars 2120, a sci-fi Metroidvania with a plucky female protagonist in a cool space suit and a bunch of steadily increasing powers to help her traverse a research lab infested with alien creepy-crawlies. The Metroid Dread influences are situated front and centre here, but that might not always be a good thing. Having spent almost 2 years in early access, Mars 2120 is finally ready for its 1.0 release – but has it been worth the wait?

As Sergeant Anna Charlotte, you find yourself stranded on the Red Planet and surrounded by danger. Something evil has taken control of the colony, everyone is dead, and there are mutants, monsters and corrupted researchers everywhere. You’re equipped with a modular combat suit that can be upgraded in a variety of ways, as well as a rifle that can be modified with three special “Cores”; Lightning, Ice, and Fire.

The obvious comparison to the Metroid series – and particularly Dread – is a bit of a double-edged sword, though. On the one hand, it’s nice to see a smaller dev paying homage to one of the genre progenitors, but on the other it highlights the gulf in quality between the two. Mars 2120 has some enjoyable moments, but it’s let down by its movement, uninspired combat, and some iffy boss design.

To elaborate on the combat, Charlotte has her rifle which can be switched through various states such as a charged purple laser gun and an ice shotgun, but there’s every indication that QUByte want you to melee everything to death. Enemies will stand in front of you and do nothing while you unload 12 to 15 rounds into them, or you can perform two melee combos on them and they die. There are some skills you can use, such as the ability to create an electrical charge around you which lifts enemies up and comically holds them in mid air, vibrating gently, but while they can buy you some time, little is more effective than just punching things.

Enemy movement is stiff and janky, yet their melee attacks are often lightning fast, as though they’re missing a few frames of animation when they come at you. Enemy gunmen will stand still and let you shoot them, barely retaliating as you stand opposite with the trigger held down. Mars 2120 also features two of the worst Metroidvania bosses I’ve seen in a while, with a huge brute that has a total of three easily-avoidable attacks, and a giant ice spider that requires you to simply melee it until it falls back down the hole it crawled out of. Overall, the combat is just very lackadaisical, not helped by sound design (the gun is literally a pew-pew machine) that robs it of any oomph.

Exploration fairs a little better for the most part. Charlotte quite quickly unlocks an air-dash and wall-jump for her lightning Core, with more complex moves available later. How they unlock is less exciting. Usually you’ll find an obstacle, then almost immediately after find either a power-up or boss that grants you the power you need to overcome it. There’s not much heart in it, although backtracking to use new powers can yield decent rewards. If you can, that is. Mars 2120 has a fast-travel system, but it’s not super helpful and the nodes are few and far between.

Now and then the perspective will shift, which always looks cool, but there are moments when you’re expected to platform with 3D objects on a strictly 2D plain, which is just a bit of a nightmare. Jump on a moving platform and because Charlotte is locked to her plain, the thing you’re on which just slide out from underneath you like we’re back on an older console.

You can unlock skills and upgrades, which you then equip at save points. But you need both the required XP amount and to find the upgrade itself in the world, which isn’t made explicitly clear, so for a while I thought something was bugged – especially as you can see all the potential skills right away. Mars 2120 dallies with some Soulslike mechanics in this regard, with enemies respawning and Charlotte’s health returning when you save the game. However, it does not refill if you die after a checkpoint, so good luck if you hit a checkpoint between two tough areas. It’s a weird hybrid version of the system that never really works – either refill my health at a checkpoint or just send me back to the last lab – they’re never that far away anyway.

It’s a shame, because there certainly is a decent game in here somewhere. A few levels are pretty cool, such as one that takes place atop and aboard a speeding, half-destroyed train, but there’s not much originality going on. Charlotte is a blank cipher of a protagonist, and could be literally anyone or anything in terms of narrative as she doesn’t talk or really interact with anything, and the enemy design is okay but falls back on re-coloured enemies in the first few areas. The powers, too, are very par-for-the-course, doing nothing we haven’t seen many times in many other games.

Mars 2120 just doesn’t do enough well enough to stand out. You can see its inspirations clear as day – well, one of them, anyway – but that’s not enough to save it from unengaging combat, badly designed bosses and samey level design. For fans of the genre it presents a serviceable adventure with some flashy powers, but it still feels very much like an early access game.