A product of Limbic Entertainment and 505 Games, Memories of Mars is a multiplayer, open world survival game that was released to Steam’s Early Access on June 5th. This isn’t the first game this year that draws inspiration from the red planet, but it is certainly one of the brightest. As a human clone left in an abandoned Martian mining colony, you must scavenge for resources, interact with other players, fight off enemies and build your own shelters in order to survive.
Gameplay takes place 100 years in the future, where harsh solar flares have made life on the planet all but obsolete and radioactive interference has turned once docile robots into killing machines. If you’ve played games like Rust, H1Z1 or DayZ, you will feel right at home in Memories of Mars, but instead of zombies, you’ll be fighting off Martian robots and other clones. Whether you band together with other players or go at it alone, the limits of a game like this are solely up to your imagination.
Gameplay
Like most survival games, there are really two ways to play: you can “GTA it” and go around killing and stealing from everyone you see, or you can tactically interact with the other players in an attempt to work together and increase your chances of survival.
If you’re confident in your combat skills, you may have success with the first tactic, but if you’re a newbie, like me, you will probably be better off trying to find someone with a mic and teaming up. Finding a squad will not only increase your chances of survival; if you can find someone who knows what he or she is doing, it’s also a great way to learn about the game.
A couple key elements to survival include gathering enough oxygen to keep you alive and mining materials that can be used to 3-D print (craft) objects like weapons or ammunition. Again, you can either steal other players’ loot (not always a good idea) or you can search the landscape, dead robots and structures for minerals and oxygen containers. What I’ve found is that most people are even willing to share spare materials and items if you simply ask for them.
Overview
A common complaint that many have with the genre is that most of the gameplay is simply spent mining materials and there is a lot of “downtime” while you try to gather inventory and acquire resources. The truth is if you’re looking for high-action and low strategy, survival games probably aren’t for you. Yes you will be spending a lot of time building your base and collecting materials, but the fear of losing all of your valuable resources is one of the only things that prevents people from simply killing one another.
In the end, survival games are about exploring and figuring it out as you go along. If you enjoy MMO games that give you the power to create your own destiny and interact with other players in a fun and friendly way, then Memories of Mars will be a refreshing glance at what multiplayer, open world games should represent. Not only does Memories of Mars develop an interesting backstory, something that many survival games lack, it deals intuitive gameplay and elegant design, creating an experience that competes with the best this genre has to offer.
Here is the Memories of Mars Steam Early Access Launch Trailer:
Memories of Mars is now available for PC via Steam Early Access.
I’m from Charlotte, NC and have been playing/ studying games for as long as I can remember. What I love about gaming is that it gives people from every walk of life a chance to engage their curiosity, creativity and optimism on a fundamental level and I look forward to being able to help people find the games that speak to them the most.
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