RPGWatch Feature: Mars War Logs - Review
 

The release of Mars War Logs came as a surprise. Shifting the release to an eartlier date and providing little to no marketing in advance must be a new marketing strategy that I haven't seen before.
Anyway, together with the ads campaign we got a review copy from Focus Home International and our new editor Fluent looked into what kind of game Mars War Logs really was and found some serious drawbacks, which he penned down in this review.
More information.

strange. the dialogs besides a few hickups I felt were the best I've read in the last 7 years.
best character development and personalities, plot was ok, no cheesy twists, I loved it overall. Don;t trust the review. Its worth it

All the more reason for multiple reviews!

A few hiccups? It seemed like every other line was unnatural and poorly written, lol. But hey, we're all entitled to our own opinions. Glad you enjoyed it but I was bored stiff by the end of it.

Well it's a budget title and for the low price I can't complain. I didn't except a new Mass Effect as the developer doesn't have the cash to make one.

Regardless of the faults I found it enjoyable.:)

It wouldn't have been so bad if the story was interesting. After you leave the prison camp it goes downhill fast. I wasn't expecting Mass Effect, but I was expecting something, anything to hold my interest. Where's the villain? Where's the motivation to continue playing? And near the end they're rattling off names and locations that you don't care about, from the sheer boredom of it all I think I nearly died playing it :). Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad, but it certainly wasn't good.

I didn't even mention in the review that unless you kill your enemies, they are going to "respawn" in the same areas and you are going to be fighting the same enemies in the same spots over and over again. Combat was fun, but by the 5th time you've killed the group when you're just trying to finish a quest, it starts to become a chore.

I'm shocked that it's gotten a decent score on Metacritic so far. But hey, different strokes for different folks and all that.

I wouldn't pay $20 for it, that's for sure. Maybe $8.

Even the romance options were half-assed. Why even include it in the game if it's going to be executed that poorly? They should have spent those resources developing a compelling plot, or an interesting back-story for your companions. Ugh. Rant over. :)

Hey genius… if you feel the need to talk about the ending of a game, how about using spoiler tags next time?

As for your opinion, no offense intended, but you're the guy who swears that Kingdoms of Amalur is one of the best RPGs you've ever played.

I didn't even realize that was a spoiler. Sorry.

Can't argue with you about Reckoning, as I do think it's one of the best games I've ever played. Any RPG where you drop over 200 hours into it without beating it and enjoy every second of it has to count for something. If you think holding that opinion invalidates my opinions on other games, then I suggest you don't read my reviews :)

I didn't mean to sound harsh. I was just sort of pissed that now I already know what to expect at the end of the game.

As for your love of KoA, well… I suppose I've seen stranger things in this world. ;)

I really hate to be a jerk, but Mars: War Logs is a pretty solid game for what it is, and it deserves far better than to be butchered by an unqualified "reviewer" like Fluent - someone who has little background or knowledge of the genre, obvious bias, and little credibility. Why not coax Dartagnan, JDR, Pessimeister, Ghanburigan, or someone else of that ilk to review an RPG for the watch? It would be much more informative for users of the site and a lot more fair to the game being analyzed to have credible forum users like these write reviews instead of the first volunteer to raise his hand.

For what's it's worth, Mars has some rough edges, but it also has some neat ideas that come together pretty well (like the crafting system), a unique atmosphere (the best comparison I can think of is a bit of a cross between Blade Runner and Fallout), and a fairly entertaining and challenging combat system. While some of the side-quests haven't exactly been that great, and the English translation is a bit awkward at times (though never so bad as to be completely confusing or obtuse), the main story is reasonably well developed while avoiding the typical Mass Effect-style "you are the chosen one to save the universe!" cliche. There is also a decent amount of choice and consequence, and while it doesn't approach the likes of Fallout 1 &2, Arcanum, The Witcher, or Alpha Protocol in this regard, it has more of an effort put into player choice than most AAA RPGs. It's certainly not perfect or as fleshed out as it could be, but for $20, Mars offers very good value for those looking for a unique sci-fi role-playing experience - something that is all too rare in the genre.

I do agree that writing is poor especially dialogs.I don't think skill tree is as good as reviewer claims,it's ok,it does it job but nothing to get excited about.Game isn't totally bad but but I haven't finished,it will wait in my backlog until there are no better things to play.

Also no offense fluent because I don't dislike you, but I don't think you should be doing reviews.I Think people Nerevarine mentioned would be just fine.

So, us Codexers have some questions Fluent, you say:

In other words: this is a good game, but a bad story. You follow this up with the brilliant:

In other words:

RPG Mechanics: Check, they work according to you.
Gameplay: Check, it works according to you.
Additional systems: Check, they're fun according to you.

Everything central to a game and an RPG functions, but since the graphics are repetitive and the dialogue isn't your cup of tea you fail this game? :lol:

This game might very well be terrible, this discussion is not about that, I just doubt it's as terrible as your review. As another user wrote:

Ok, I think we can stop piling up on Fluent now.

Well, it is his first review for RPGWatch, so have some patient I suppose. Still it might be good to have second opinion on this.

As always a review is an opinion of the reviewer, so anybody who feels they can do a review that in their opinion does the game more justice feel free to write that and send it to me. Perhaps we can run that one as well.

I'm not Fluent, and can't write a review as my english pretty much sucks, but can be short about these points.

About pros:
- Some skills are not balanced very good (there are a few OP skills)
- And also repetative as the game contains mobrespawn crap design
- Which is odd at times as the second best armor in the game if upgraded has better stats than the best armor upgraded

About cons:
- Actually in my case the plot was interesting and I loved every single line of it unlike many other games where I skip the dialogue if it starts to be boring, annoying and uninteresting
- Yes the dialogue is cheesy and silly at times, but I found it fun so that can't be among cons
- I didn't see repetitive environments really, in fact with the engine used they've made pretty different things - or the reviewer speaks about the train that does repeat once.

This game is fun and IMO deserves 3/5. I'd go for 4/5 if there were no mobrespawns. I'm definetly buying it's sequel if it gets made and hope they remove the respawn crap from the game and make it bigger.

Yeah, well I don't think any rational human being is going to take criticism from the Codex seriously. Too much bile, not enough substance :P

Dunno about criticism, but their avatars sukk (that'd serve as a better flamewar topic).

Fluent, have you tried different paths or dialog trees to see if it leads to different consequences and different endings?

Pretty much this. No mention of quests either (quality/variety/multiple outcomes/meaningful choices), which for me are far more important than the story.

Well, but from a purely argumentativ point of view he has a point. The core mechanics you spend most of your time on are solid but the game sucks? ;)

We had a second guy who played the game, btw. He didn't feel misrepresented by the article.

Still, how is one determining that others should stop writing reviews simply based on the fact they don't agree with the review…and because they claim the reviewer lacks experience.

I don't know how much experience Fluent has, but how does one get more experience if they're not allowed to write? Though of course, experience also can come with harsh comments :P and one has to be ready for that… but simply saying they should stop writing is a bit much to me.

Come on people.

Fluent likes what he likes and he bothered to do a full review of a game we're all looking at. That's more than can be said for most of us around here.

I appreciate any review - even if I don't agree with it. As for this one - I haven't played Mars and have seen nothing to be impressed by as of yet.

True, but this review is representitive of rpgwatch, a web site dedicated to rpgs and so should be very detailed when it comes to what cacaro mentioned (quests quality/variety/multiple outcomes/meaningful choices).

The review should also consider the budget involved in making such a game in the rpg genre and give credit where due to the developers when attempting to do well and maybe suggest improvement to encourage rpg developers in the future.

That is kind of what Temple of Elemental Evil is like. The implementation of the mechanics of the game were great but the story was terrible. Story is a HUGE part of an RPG, IMHO, the MOST IMPORTANT part.

Haven't had much time to game lately but plan on playing this eventually.

As for the review it does seem a bit unbalanced to me. If most of the other aspects were good and fun I probably wouldn't have given so much weight to the story but it was Fluent's review. Who am I to say how important each aspect of the game is to him.

As Dart said I don't have the time to do reviews so I'm not going to bash Fluent for taking his time to do one. Especially since he's new to it.

I guess my biggest shock is that there are actually games Fluent doesn't like.;)

Yet questwise it was much better than most people make it out to be. Multiple paths to solve most quests, choices with sometimes delayed consequences, not to mention that in the temple you could align yourself with one of four conflicting factions (or not, depending on what you chose).

So it may have been terrible storywise (though you certainly couldn't expect a story on par with PST from a RPG based on an ancient PNP module), but it's much better if you look at quests. That's exactly my main problem with this review - it mentions an allegedly terrible story, while at the same time completely neglecting core aspect of a RPG: quests.

[QUOTE=SpoonFULL;1061196111]Fluent, have you tried different paths or dialog trees to see if it leads to different consequences and different endings?[/QU

No. I was uninterested in the story, so branching dialogs and choice and consequence was of little importance to me. Sure, maybe the second ending is a bit better, but I couldn't be bothered to try it because the experience was poor.

To be honest, I don't care one bit about choices and consequences or branching storylines if the core story is done poorly. If I don't care about the story, why should I care about the choices involved in it?

I didn't mention the quests in the review because they were middle of the road, nothing to really see here. A few of them were okay, and maybe I should have talked more about them in the review, but they really didn't stand out and I can't even remember half of them, so that tells you how good they were.

The core mechanics of the game which are fun (combat, skill tree and crafting) do not carry the game through to being good. The most important part (The story) is uninteresting and meandering, so there's no real reason to continue playing. The combat does get repetitive after awhile too unless you kill your enemies. I probably should have mentioned that in the review as well, but sometimes you can't think of everything and something goes unmentioned.

I will try to do better to be more thorough in my future reviews.

[QUOTE=Fluent;1061196150]Many thanks for your reply. I review academic articles from time to time and keep reminding myself to review them keeping in mind the bigger picture and not on the things that I personally like or dislike.

Your review is now published elsewhere (Gamebanshee for example) which does not provide the developer with any encouragement for future improvement or work and maybe to their detriment.

I think that the branching plot should have at least got a mention, regardless of how good or bad the story itself actually is.

Interesting choices and a weak storyline aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. I can recall more than a few examples of RPGs with nonexistant/weak plots which, at the same time, offered some pretty interesting choices either during the main quest (such as the above example with TOEE and its -among others- temple faction quests) or the side quests.

I won't spoil anything, but you do get one major choice later in the game, but both sides of the story are so underdeveloped it's hard to make a meaningful decision. You just pick one to get it over with and continue the rushed story.

You're right though, I should have mentioned this stuff. There's even one single instance I recall that was pretty cool. It involved choices and had a very severe consequence for making the wrong choice. You C&C guys would have loved that.

That's about the only time I recall having some interesting consequences for my choices I made.

I see for future reviews I have to be a little more thorough and report everything in the game, even if I don't find it all that interesting or intriguing, or it's poorly executed, etc.. Like I said, I will try harder on my next one to do just that. I'm actually listening to all your guys' criticism and I guarantee the next review will be much better for you all.

Many thanks Fluent :thumbsup:.

Maybe Fluent can, odd as it may sound, revise his review?

Flesh it out further, add more talking points, etc?

BTW, I started the game but after playing a few hours it didn't grab me so I put it aside. Maybe this weekend I'll play more.

That's a bad sign for a cRPG. Most of them I end up playing WAAAAY too long at a sitting and for far too many sittings a day.

I edited my review slightly to add a paragraph about choices and consequences, as well as a bit about combat and how it got repetitive. I think that is the extent that I want to revise this review, but I will keep all suggestions in mind for the next game I review.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Thank you - Fluent.

Don't tell others what they want to hear, stay true to your own opinion.

Absolutely, HiddenX.

I added the bit about C&C because for one, lots of you guys like that sort of thing, and two, it was a "feature" that played a part in the game that I completely ignored in my initial review, so it was good to add a little about that in.

It is not a matter of telling people what they want to hear, it is a matter of being thorough, competent and honest in your review to include 'all' aspects/features of the game so that the readers can then make up their minds about purchasing the game or not. Similar to reviewing an article, the editors include check sheets with tick boxes that the reviewers must complete irrespective whether the article is acceptable or not.

The reviewer can also inject their own opinions but based on experience rather than personal preference to be professional.

We have a good laugh over at the Codex because of this "review". As another codexer said, the game might very well suck, but its probably not worse than this review. I suggest you Watchers introduce some minimum quality requirements for your content.

Hey, even if his review skills could use some work - I appreciate the effort Fluent took to write it. You gotta start somewhere right? Thanks Fluent for taking the time to write and adding content to the RPG community.

If other folks think they can do so much better - then go ahead and write one.