Memories of Mars (PC) Preview

The player is given a choice between a couple of public servers, with no ability to create a private one, and fiddle with its settings à la Conan Exiles. The game begins, and the main character (no customisation as of now) wakes up in a good-looking cloning chamber, courtesy of the Unreal Engine. Everything runs very smoothly, and the controls are fine and responsive, so anyone would assume that "this ought to be good." You walk towards the door... and suddenly you are underneath the game world, falling endlessly, and stuck in videogame limbo.

After a relatively quick restart, you manage to spawn on the surface of Mars, which, like the previous interior area, looks pretty, despite it being nothing more than an endless, rocky desert devoid of any magnificent points of interest as in good 'ol Earth. Since you don't really know what needs to be done, you start doing the only thing that you have been doing so far: start picking up items. This being Mars, of course, it means that most of those items will be rocks; the crafting components for all your equipment, from weaponry, armour, and food, to base building items.

In conclusion, survival in Mars, with the ability to craft items, and build a base - fun, right? Hard to tell, because most recipes are hidden behind an experience paywall that's so high that it's easy to assume that you are the one to blame. Sadly, that's not the case. Experience points are amassed insanely slowly, and the price-tag attached to skills and crafting formulae is equally as crazy. Some won't let that stop them, though, thus they will endure the endless grind, build a big bad base... and lose it all in a matter of minutes.

There are currently three ways to lose here. First, by meeting the robotic enemies that are scattered on the planet's surface, and finding out that you weren't prepared, something quite common for starting players. The second is by simply playing solo, as those who team up here have a pretty big advantage over your lonely behinds. As for the third way, it's simple. Creating a structure is not enough, as keeping it safe from burglars means that you also need to pay rent in those hard-to-gather experience points.

This demands a certain commitment that most people won't be willing to endure. If you want to do anything here, then you should be prepared to spend hours upon hours, and only along with a bunch of friends, unless you want to one day find out that an enemy team has built a huge wall around your base while you were offline! The core problem, though, is that this just isn't a fun game, first because all that gathering and shooting is simplistic as heck, but mainly because there isn't much to do here - with its Early Access state not being an acceptable excuse.