Deliver Us Mars review (PS5)

A follow-up to Deliver Us The Moon from developer KeokeN Interactive, Deliver Us Mars is a direct sequel to the first game for current and last-gen PlayStation and Xbox consoles, as well as PCs. We tested the PlayStation 5 version.

You might remember that it took a while for Deliver Us The Moon to become available for all systems, with plenty of post-release polish and versions for additional platforms along the way. Deliver Us The Moon is being released by a different publisher (Frontier) and available for all systems at the same time – but the polish that the first game initially needed is sometimes missing from the sequel as well.

Deliver Us Mars is just as ambitious or perhaps even more ambitious than the last game, with KeokeN trying to craft their sequel into a more cinematic format this time around. And while the environments are equally gorgeous on Mars as they were on the moon, this approach does bring more rough edges to the surface. These can be seen in the story delivery, which now relies more on cutscenes than the holograms you found in the first game. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad change, but despite nicely polished environments the character models and their facial animations don’t compare well to what we’re used to from the AAA games that inspired this type of cinematic storytelling.

The story itself has some issues as well, but some of that will depend on personal taste. Where the first game was morally ambiguous when it came to protagonist Kathy’s motivations and her father’s role – triggering players to think – Delivers Us Mars pushes characters more into a good guy/bad guy role. Kathy’s wish to reunite with her father is a strong personal motivator that makes her likeable though, and it’s easy to stay engaged with her and the story because of it.

We’d even go so far as to say that the story is, along with the visual design of the environments, one of the highlights of Deliver Us Mars. It’s an ambitious narrative-driven game from a relatively small team, and the gorgeous scenery and wonderful music brings Mars to life like few other games have. Sci-fi enthusiasts will find plenty to enjoy, and will take the game’s rougher edges for granted as a result.

Those edges include less-than-inspired puzzles that repeat themselves too often, and a climbing system that’s interesting and somewhat immersive but rarely fun. Emphasizing careful timing in order to scale a wall feels connected to the real thing and infuses this part with a real sense of danger, but after the first time you won’t think “I can’t wait to do that again”, whereas climbing sections in Uncharted or Tomb Raiders are thrilling and fun.

But while we’d love some technical polish (some character movement looks quite awkward) post-launch, we did enjoy Deliver Us Mars as a sequel to the first game. It’s gorgeous in places and has an engaging sci-fi narrative with a personal touch that ultimately makes us curious to see where a possible third game might lead us, and with some polish this score would have been half a point higher as well.

Score: 7.0/10