Taking place ten years after Deliver Us the Moon, Deliver Us Mars lets you explore our neighboring planet. Play as Kathy Johanson, a young astronaut on a mission to save Earth by retrieving some vital technology from Mars. Many of the characters you meet will be familiar if you played the original. If you play Deliver Us the Moon first, you’ll have a much better understanding of the story and your crew’s motivations.
It’s a much more personal and intimate story this time. The mission to save the Earth is always there, but it’s the relationships between the characters that keep you playing and discovering more. Some of the voice actors give great performances that really enhance some of the emotional moments. Occasionally, you’ll run into puzzles. You’ll have to move Ayla around to solve decryption puzzles that require you to place energy beams. As you progress through the game, the puzzles get harder. All of them aren’t too hard, so the pace of the game never slackens. Keep pushing forward to find out what’s next.
Climbing is one of the big new mechanics. Kathy is much more nimble than the original astronaut, and she can climb up surfaces on Mars or along fabric insulation inside the station using ice picks. Each arm will be controlled separately, and you’ll use the L2 and R2 triggers to stab your picks into the wall to climb. The triggers seem neat at first, and it’s easy to get into a rhythm, but it gets old fast. Most games just let your character climb automatically. You’ll tire out your fingers if you do it manually. Although you can use one trigger instead of all of them, you’ll still be holding it down constantly, so none of them really help. Sometimes you’ll end up throwing yourself in the wrong direction when you have to jump across gaps to get to the next climbable section.
As well as the red sands of Mars, you’ll also get to explore a space station, an icy valley, and some scenes on Earth. I love driving a space rover across a desolate landscape, or looking into the depths of space through a porthole. Earth is less visually impressive, though. The setting is mostly used for Kathy’s flashbacks, but they lose some of their emotional impact due to the slow frame rate and frequent pop-ins.
During our six-to-eight-hour playthrough, we ran into a couple of bugs, like not being able to interact with door mechanisms. You’re never too far back in the game thanks to frequent autosaving. This could only be fixed by restarting the chapter. Deliver Us Mars is a brilliantly captivating adventure despite a few minor issues. You’ll be fully invested in following Kathy’s journey through to the end despite the simple puzzles and intriguing collectibles. With another poignant storyline, KeokeN Interactive has really built on the success of the first game.
