MARS SIMULATOR - RED PLANET

With a title like Mars Simulator, you would expect a simulation of Mars. Alas, Planetbase or Sol 0 do a far better job of simulating the red planet. John Carter of Mars did a better simulation. The game thinks so little of its subject matter that it relies on fantasies of alien artifacts and glowing crystals to stretch the content beyond 4 missions. The lexicon is limited to a short list of statistics, condensed from Wikipedia. The mars rover, the star of the show, doesn't handle as well as my lawn mower. But it does have the same navigational system. Scratch that - with my lawn mower, I can at least follow my tracks. Imagine the thrill of exploring Mars without a sense of direction (no compass) or location (strategic map looks like a square of sandpaper, with blots). Where is south? Which blot is that cliff wall? But now I am just getting snarky. If you must buy this, wait until the price goes down to, say, $1.50 Cdn.

Mars Simulator is somewhat more game-like than Take on Mars (TKOM), and within the limits imposed by the user interface, easier to play. Landing is especially difficult as the lander does not respond well to the key commands. When you start the actual landing, get on the W and D keys immediately or you won't make it to the target zone. My only other complaint is that the rover moves far too fast to be realistic and you must do all the driving; there's no instruction programming interface as there is in TKOM. There is no manual and no instructions other than what appear on the screen as you play, so I've extracted them, slightly edited, from the game files. The capsule carrying the rover has entered the Martian atmosphere. Prepare to land the capsule safely in the landing zone using the arrow keys or the W,A,S and D keys to steer the capsule towards the landing zone. When the capsule is close enough to the ground, open the parachute with the spacebar. When you have control of the rover, move it forwards and backwards using the W and S keys. Use the A and D keys to turn left and right. Change the camera angle by pressing and holding the right mouse button and then moving the mouse. You can zoom in and out using the mouse wheel. Take the rover for a test drive to get used to the controls. Drive to the circle indicated on your screen. Next, take some photographs of the surroundings. Press 2 to switch to camera mode. Take 15 photos of the area by pressing the spacebar to take a photo. Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel. Since you can take a maximum of 50 photos before running out of memory, transmit your photographs back to Earth after each expedition. To successfully transmit them you’ll need to ensure that you’ve got full reception. On the lower left of the interface you’ll see a signal strength indicator. Drive around with the rover until you’re able to get a full signal (five green bars). When you find a place where the reception is good enough to transmit your photographs back to Earth, click on “inventory” on the lower left of the interface and then on “photos”. View your photographs, delete any you don’t like, then transmit the rest to Earth by clicking on the “transmit all photos” button. Now drive back to the green circle to start the next mission, rock hunting. Collect some rock samples. Find a small rock and maneuver the rover so that it’s within reach, then press 3 to use the claw. Use the A and D keys to rotate the arm left and right. You can raise and lower both parts of the arm with the Q,E,W and S keys. Press the spacebar to pick up an object. Now you’ve got a rock. Press Enter to place it in your inventory. You can then view the rock in your inventory by clicking on “inventory” on the lower left of the interface. Collect four more rock samples using the claw. Take soil samples next. Press 4 to use the drill. Using the A and D keys, rotate the arm left and right. Raise and lower both parts of the arm with the Q, E, W and S keys. Press the spacebar to activate the drill. As you drill, the dust you extract will be placed directly in your inventory. Drive back to the green circle to start the next mission, which is to take a closer look at the terrain. Satellite photos of this area show a number of strange objects. Explore the valley to the south and find them. Sounds from unknown sources have been detected in this area. Maybe they’re connected to the strange objects in the satellite photos. Explore the area. You should be able to see glowing rocks ahead; they must be the strange objects in the satellite photos. Use the claw to take a sample. Satellite photos show three more glowing rocks. Find them and take samples of each for a total of four samples of these artifacts. Take 25 more photos and transmit them back to Earth. The entrance to a large cave lies to the southeast. Drive there. It’s dark in the cave and visibility is poor; press the N key to switch to infrared mode. Explore the cave, carefully. Since no sunlight reaches the interior of the cave, the solar cells can’t be recharged. The yellow glowing mineral crystals seem like they may be an energy source; you might be able to charge the solar cells with them instead. Collect 10 samples. Sensors indicate that there may be frozen water nearby. Take a core sample if you come across any ice. The seismograph just recorded a powerful earthquake. Get the rover out of the cave as fast as you can before it caves in. Storage containers for the samples are all full. The samples must be transported back to Earth. Return to the landing zone. Watch out for whirlwinds on the way, and drive the rover onto the platform. The return capsule is ready to take off but it's very windy. Use the arrow keys to steer against the wind and prevent the capsule from crashing.

I played the intro to the game, where you are attempting to land your rover in the correct landing zone. The first time, I missed the landing zone so I tried again. This time, I positioned my shadow dead center of the target and still missed. when I restarted again, the ground turned white and my computer lagged like crazy. This game is filled with little things that degrade the overall quality of it. First, the graphics are not great, 32 bit + bad animation didn't make the game amazing. The menu screen is very bad; it looks like what you'd normally play on an arcade machine, not a game you spent 8 dollars on. Second, this game is incredibly underwhelming. Knowing that an 8 dollar game usually meant that the game was good, coupled with the not so bad intro video, I had high hopes going into it. Then I was greeting with bad graphics, a menu screen that looks completely 2D and looked like it was made back when computers were the size of bookshelves, and some not so great game play, with the bad animation, and the fact that you cannot move your camera view around and try to adjust your trajectory accordingly. I wish this game was better, because I really liked the premise of it, and that's what led me to buying the game, but it wasn't what it was chalked up to be in the slightest.

Could be an awesome game. Sadly, I already have issues upon starting the game, despite I haven't tried and played the game as of yet (which I won't do either). The game starts in German actually, and menu opens in English. Graphical settings won't allow me to go to my native resolution of 1920*1080 for my monitor, it's max is 1600*1050.... If you want to play this at a native resoultion above 1600*1050 good luck's wishes, you won't. Now the game itself: Pro's: - Graphics are alright - Controls are neat - Surroundings and actions look nice - Missions are nice too Con's: - Resolution changing - Voice acting (if it's not just a text-to-speech thing) - Driving is slidey - Feels like it's ripped off from somewhere (don't know, just the feeling)

bad...