KeokeN Interactive and Frontier Developments PLC have brought us the next space adventure game to the current generation of consoles with ‘Deliver Us Mars’. It’s based 10 years after their previous title being ‘Deliver Us The Moon’. This title is an atmospheric sci-fi tale that takes you on an action-packed and suspenseful mission to recover the ‘ARKs’, colony ships that have been lost on Mars.

You are controlling the main character of the story, a young trainee astronaut by the name of Kathy Johnanson. You jump between your childhood into her young adult years quite a bit which is fantastic as it fills in the story a little more. You are on the hunt to find your father, Issac Johnanson, who abandoned Earth with the ARKs which made him a wanted fugitive on Earth. Your sister, Claire, stopped you from leaving with him years before he tried taking you to Mars.

There was not one complaint about the gameplay in this title; everything was so well polished and the story was so immersive that I was hooked into it in every entire way. It was quite nice playing a game that does not involve combat but still is able to die from making the wrong move within the environmental surroundings. I got to live my childhood dream of flying into space when you launch on the mission to go to Mars to seek your father out.

You need to physically press buttons and flip switches and adjust dials to make the ship take off and everything done there just felt so realistic. I loved being able to solve some puzzles within the game to proceed further along the mission, with a robotic companion as company. None of these puzzles were so hard that you got stuck on them but were hard enough that you needed to think about what you were doing.

From the beginning of the game, you are prompted what controls you should be using and as you progress through the story you are prompted with more controls. The controlling of the character has been optimized so well that everything just flowed regardless of what you needed to do. You get to control Kathy as both a young lady and a child with flashbacks. You can also control your companion robot to do little bits and pieces, which Kathy does not have access to.

The realism of the art style in this game kept me hooked from the start on how beautiful everything was and the textures put into everything just makes it feel and look amazing. Deliver Us Mars definitely keeps you immersed in the story knowing that the next thing you will look out for will look stunning and cinematic.

The flashbacks with the sunsets or sunrises, floating around in the spaceship, and having the sunrays coming in through the windows or looking outside to the beautiful glow from the surface of Mars kept me drooling over the beautiful environmental features. It truly is epic.

The voice acting done in this title sounded like it was designed for a full-scale movie. You could hear the emotions in their voices. In a space title where space is silent, the atmospheric ambiance is crucial. Luckily, everything down to the noises you hear from your backpack floating in space to dials and blips of switchboards kept me immersed in the dark recesses of outer space. The developers did a fantastic job with the soundtracking. Everything sounded exactly how you would expect it which did not disappoint at all.

Regardless, if you played ‘Deliver Us The Moon’ this title is pure gold and I enjoyed every minute of the game. It kept me immersed the whole time and had me thinking constantly about what I needed to do next. If you love a great storyline and a great adventure and a title that will keep you engaged from start to finish this game is designed for you.

Written by: Hayden Nelson