Deliver Us Mars Review Summary

Engaging and Improved Story: Players consistently praise the game's narrative, highlighting its depth, emotional impact, and significant improvement over its predecessor. The story is described as thrilling, well-written, and capable of keeping players engrossed from beginning to end, often exploring complex themes and character relationships.

Enjoyable Gameplay Experience: Reviewers found the overall gameplay to be fun, engaging, and well-paced, offering a relaxing yet immersive adventure. The game's exploration, puzzle elements, and fluid mechanics contribute to a positive experience, often noted as an improvement from the previous title.

Immersive Atmosphere and Visuals: The game excels in creating a captivating sci-fi atmosphere, particularly through its stunning Martian landscapes and detailed environments. Players appreciate the realistic portrayal of space travel and the emotional depth conveyed through the visuals and overall ambiance.

High-Quality Audio and Voice Acting: The game's sound design, including its soundtrack, sound effects, and voice acting, is highly praised for enhancing immersion and emotional moments. The quality of voice acting, particularly in various languages like Chinese and German, is frequently highlighted as exceptional.

Impressive Production Value: Despite potentially smaller budget constraints, the game is lauded for its beautiful graphics, excellent acting, and overall polished feel. Many reviewers felt the game delivered a high-quality experience that exceeded expectations for an indie title.

Clunky & Frustrating Gameplay: Players consistently found the core gameplay, especially the climbing mechanics, to be clunky, unresponsive, and frustrating. This includes issues with controls, hitboxes, and repetitive actions, leading to a tedious and unenjoyable experience.

Poor Character Models & Animations: The game suffers from significantly low-quality character models, stiff animations, and unconvincing facial expressions. This often leads to an 'uncanny valley' effect, breaking immersion and making characters difficult to empathize with.

Weak & Predictable Story: The narrative is widely criticized for being uninteresting, predictable, and overly focused on a clichéd family drama. Many found the protagonist and other characters annoying and selfish, with illogical motivations and a disappointing ending.

Repetitive & Excessive Puzzles/Cutscenes: The game is perceived to have too many repetitive puzzles, particularly the beam-connecting and decryption types, which feel like filler and slow down the pace. Frequent and lengthy cutscenes and flashbacks also interrupt gameplay flow and break immersion.

Technical Issues & Poor Optimization: Players reported numerous bugs, glitches, and performance issues, including significant frame rate drops, especially with ray tracing and hair rendering enabled. The game is often described as unpolished and poorly optimized, leading to crashes and a generally unstable experience.

Core Gameplay: Puzzles & Climbing: The game primarily features environmental puzzles, often involving directing energy beams or manipulating objects, alongside significant climbing and platforming sections. While some puzzles are clever, many are described as simple or repetitive, often requiring exploration and movement around the map.

Moderate Game Length: Players report completing the game in approximately 8-12 hours, with completionists taking slightly longer. The game is divided into 11 chapters, which can be replayed individually for achievements.

Linear, Story-Driven Experience: The game is a highly linear, narrative-focused adventure, often described as a 'walking simulator' with interactive elements. It prioritizes storytelling, character development, and cinematics over complex gameplay or player choices, with a clear, guided progression.

Mars Exploration & Objectives: The game's setting is Mars, where players control an astronaut to explore bases, drive a rover, and uncover the mystery of missing colonists. The overarching goal involves solving a message and retrieving advanced Ark ships to save Earth.

Shift in Perspective: Unlike its predecessor, which was primarily first-person, this game is predominantly played from a third-person perspective, with some first-person scenes. This change in camera angle is a notable difference from the previous title.

Ray Tracing impacts performance: Enabling Ray Tracing, especially reflections and shadows, significantly degrades performance, leading to frequent stuttering and severe FPS drops, sometimes to single digits during cutscenes. Disabling Ray Tracing generally improves performance.

Frequent crashes and stuttering: Many players report frequent game crashes, especially when using DirectX 12 or Epic graphics settings. Stuttering and lag spikes are also common, particularly during loading large amounts of content or when transitioning between areas. Some users experienced system freezes.

Mixed performance on high-end PCs: While some high-end systems (e.g., RTX 4070 TI, 3070ti) reported smooth experiences, others with powerful hardware still encountered performance issues, especially with max settings and Ray Tracing enabled. The game requires a very good CPU and GPU.

DirectX 11 offers better stability: Players found that running the game in DirectX 11 mode significantly improved performance and stability, reducing crashes and stuttering compared to DirectX 12.

Long loading times: Players reported experiencing slow and massive loading times, even when using an SSD, which can disrupt the gameplay flow.

Story-driven experience, prequel recommended: Many players recommend this game primarily for its narrative, especially for fans of story-driven and sci-fi genres. However, a significant portion advises playing the prequel, 'Deliver Us The Moon,' first to fully understand the story and context. Some even suggest the prequel is superior.

Wait for a sale: A recurring sentiment is that the game is not worth its full price. Players frequently recommend purchasing it during a sale, often suggesting a price point of around 10-20 Euros/dollars, or even less, to make it a worthwhile experience.

Walking simulator with puzzles: The game is often described as a 'walking simulator' with puzzle elements, appealing to players who enjoy this specific sub-genre. Those who prefer more action-oriented gameplay are advised to look elsewhere.

Mixed reception, generally positive: Overall, the game receives a mixed but generally positive reception, with many players recommending it despite its flaws. Review scores range widely, but a common theme is that it's an enjoyable experience, especially for those who appreciate its specific genre.

Not for action-oriented players: The game is not recommended for players seeking action-packed gameplay or those who dislike puzzles and platforming. Its focus is on narrative and exploration rather than intense action.

Short Playtime & Low Replayability: Many players found the game to be quite short, with completion times ranging from 7 to 13 hours, and little to no replay value. This led some to feel it was 'not too bad not too good' or that it left a 'bad taste' after completion.

Cinematic & Movie-like Experience: The game is frequently described as an 'interactive movie' or 'movie-game,' with developers aiming for a denser, more cinematic storytelling approach. Its atmospheric soundtrack is often compared to Hollywood productions, enhancing the film-like experience.

Mixed Reception on Story & Characters: While the overall narrative is praised, specific aspects of the story and characters receive mixed feedback. Some find the story interesting with potential, while others describe it as plain, preachy, or containing 'nonsense.' Character portrayals also vary, with some finding them understandable and others criticizing them as having 'severe psychological problems' or being 'ugly and repulsive.'

Specific Niche Appeal: The game is seen as a specific title that might not appeal to everyone, though some believe it's suitable for a broad audience. Many purchased it on sale, suggesting price sensitivity, but generally don't regret the purchase.

Mars Mission & Future Hopes: The game's focus on the Mars mission, particularly the mystery surrounding the Mars team, is a highlight for some. Players express hope for a sequel, 'Deliver Us Home,' to conclude the story.