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Memories of Mars

Memories of Mars

Written by Dave Gamble on 6/18/2018 for PC  
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To be brutally honest, my memories of mars, as delivered to be via a survival game called Memories of Mars, are short, brutal, and not in the least bit pleasant. That makes sense, of course, considering that I awoke in a dark, eerie laboratory without the glimmer of a clue as go how I came to be there, and no inkling whatsoever as to why alarm horns were blaring to announce an impending Coronal Mass Ejection, whatever that might be. Whatever it is, the sparks shooting out of electronic equipment and, of course, the alarm horns gave me a clue that it probably wasn’t something to be embrace with abandon.

While the malfunctioning equipment was bothersome in its way, I found that I had a much more visceral negative reaction to the large vertically oriented transparent tubes that contained floating cadavers, or clones, or diabolical and/or violent prisoners, or…. well, I guess it doesn’t matter what they were, I just want to get away from them before they did something spooky. Or nauseating. Or violent. It never entered my mind that they could even remotely be there to help me.

I took a quick look around and what I saw left no doubt that I was in trouble. Right there at the door to the lab was a spacesuit clad corpse, and even in my wildest hopes did I consider that it had been a peaceful, natural death. The gun lying alongside the body was the start of a clue; the fact that the gun was bereft of ammo as the remainder. Besides being a stark warning that danger was foot, it also made my gut churn when I couldn’t find any ammo to put in it. I grabbed it anyway, thinking that I might be able to get out of whatever this evil room was and find some ammo somewhere else. It is an indication of my state of mind that ammo was all I could think of - it had not yet dawned on me that thirst, starvation, and oxygen deprivation were likely to be far more dangerous opponents. Still, I had no choice. I had to head out onto the barren red planet to survive. My search took on a very different tone after that. In order to leave the lab, I would need a helmet. Luckily, I found one in the last place I was likely to look, which was right there by the exit door. I put it one and it fit perfectly. Finally, a little good luck came my way. Had I known that it was likely to be the last good luck I was to have, chances are that I would have just stayed in the lab.

Memories of Mars (MoM) is a multiplayer sandbox survival game set in the hostile environment of the planet Mars. It is currently available as an Early Access title on Steam, so the experience that I had with it in its current state is not necessarily going to be the same in the final version. In fact, reading the discussions between early players and the developers indicate that there remains a large degree of fluidity in some of the more important aspects. As it stands today, it is a brutally hard game, at least for a solo player. What I gathered from these discussions is that the multiplayer model is intended to be played co-op, or at least that seems to be the preference of the dev team. In my admittedly brief experience, it isn’t quite working out that way. Players that tried to go it alone (me, for example) report being murdered for their loot. There were references to co-op actually occurring, but the details indicated that a couple of players had teamed up to be outlaws.

As if Mars wasn’t hard enough place to survive already.

In my ten to twelve  attempts to survive, I only ran across one other human player. Neither of us were headset equipped, and the other player wouldn’t respond to typed chat messages. Rather, we both stood there staring at each other until he/she started slowly backing away from me before turning tail and running for the hills. So, no help there. I was still all alone.

Of my attempts to survive long enough to build a shelter to provide myself with even a modicum of protecting against the elements, I died before I could even find ammo eighty percent of the time. There were two occasions when I was able to gather up a fairly decent amount of weapons, food, and ancillary stuff that would have come in handy had I lived long enough to learn Crafting, but it was all to no avail. Every single attempt ended the same way: I was killed by large, mechanical spiders. I tried running away from them, which worked for awhile, but I still had to forage and they had a tendency to be wherever there were buildings or crates to be looted. I tried closing the doors behind me in a building; they opened them. I tried fighting them, but the acid they spewed at me was too strong. Even when I had weapons, I could kill one, maybe two, before they swarmed and killed me again. And again. And again.

This entirely ruined the game for me. It takes awhile to gather up the bare minimums for even a small chance at survival - dying the same way time after time early in the game was a massive demotivator. It may have been easier with another player or two to help, but to be honest that is not the way I like to play. I would prefer the chance to play solo. Between the spiders and the risks imposed by other players, it seemed very much like a Player vs. Player (PvP) game, whereas I strongly prefer a Player vs. Environment (PvE) experience. If the human element is removed, even with the spiders it would become (technically) a PvE game, albeit an unenjoyable environment. I have plenty of mediocre shooters in my Steam Library; what I was hoping for with MoM was more of a “The Martian” feeling where it is me versus the planet. In my opinion, the game would/will be much better without the spiders. The planet itself is hostile enough without gratuitous AI monsters potentially ruining a more cerebral approach to survival.

I want to hasten to note that all is not lost after being melted into a puddle of goop - all of the stuff you may have been carrying at the time is politely stuffed into a backpack by the spiders and left next to your corpse to be retrieved upon your inexplicable resurrection. If, that is, you can fight (or sneak) your way back to the loot before some other player happens across it first. Still… this remains my least favorite aspect of the game in its current form.

I should also mention that I could have built myself a shelter to protect myself and presumably my possessions, but to do so would require 'flops,' which are the survivors' currency. They can be found here or there while looting, but the best source is... wait for it.... dead spiders. Additionally, had I managed to build a shelter, I would have had to pay rent on it. With flops. You can see the dire situation that put me in!

Spiders aside, the game (absent the packs of superfluous killers) looks very good. The scenery is above average and the ambiance is spot-on. The looting is compelling, too, in that you may find a base to have been entirely picked over by some other player. There are a lot of natural resources that can simply be picked up from the planet’s surface, although they tend to be rocks containing various ores and thus will require some refining/smelting knowledge, but refined metals can often be found in storage boxes or lockers. These are one step closer to being crafted into weapons and ammo. These crafting operations are done with your handy 3D printer. All of what you find or make is carried in a very generously sized inventory - this is made possible by the lower gravity levels of the smaller-than-Earth planet. Mars gravity is a little more than one-third of Earth’s.

While the current impromptu PvP model is a turn-off for me (and judging by discussion on Steam, a great deal of other people), the persistent state of the planet adds an interesting wrinkle in that you are not the only one searching for lifesaving supplies. One would think that such scarcity would cause players to band together in a cooperative effort, but to think along those lines is to ignore centuries of human behavior. My personal opinion is that the game would be far better, and perhaps a bit more differentiated from other games, by removing both weapons and the reasons to need them (yes, I mean those accursed spiders). Doing so may or may not provide encouragement to behave cooperatively, but it would certainly provide a far better experience for the solo player.

* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company.

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About Author

I've been fascinated with video games and computers for as long as I can remember. It was always a treat to get dragged to the mall with my parents because I'd get to play for a few minutes on the Atari 2600. I partially blame Asteroids, the crack cocaine of arcade games, for my low GPA in college which eventually led me to temporarily ditch academics and join the USAF to "see the world." The rest of the blame goes to my passion for all things aviation, and the opportunity to work on work on the truly awesome SR-71 Blackbird sealed the deal.

My first computer was a TRS-80 Model 1 that I bought in 1977 when they first came out. At that time you had to order them through a Radio Shack store - Tandy didn't think they'd sell enough to justify stocking them in the retail stores. My favorite game then was the SubLogic Flight Simulator, which was the great Grandaddy of the Microsoft flight sims.

While I was in the military, I bought a Commodore 64. From there I moved on up through the PC line, always buying just enough machine to support the latest version of the flight sims. I never really paid much attention to consoles until the Dreamcast came out. I now have an Xbox for my console games, and a 1ghz Celeron with a GeForce4 for graphics. Being married and having a very expensive toy (my airplane) means I don't get to spend a lot of money on the lastest/greatest PC and console hardware.

My interests these days are primarily auto racing and flying sims on the PC. I'm too old and slow to do well at the FPS twitchers or fighting games, but I do enjoy online Rainbow 6 or the like now and then, although I had to give up Americas Army due to my complete inability to discern friend from foe. I have the Xbox mostly to play games with my daughter and for the sports games.
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