A new video game explores life on Mars centuries after human colonisation of the red planet

WHETHER it’s alien fighting machines or somewhere to leave Matt Damon for a while, Mars has long provided an attractive setting for sci-fi stories.

If we get to live on Mars, let’s hope it’s not like this.

WHETHER it’s the source of alien fighting machines devastating Victorian London, a place for mysterious canals to service long-fallen civilisations, or somewhere to leave Matt Damon for a while, the Red Planet of Mars has long provided an attractive or inspirational setting for science fiction stories.

The latest of such endeavours is role-playing game The Technomancer, developed by Spiders and published by Focus Home Interactive for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One — and it can best be described as being something akin to a cross between Mass Effect, The Witcher and Borderlands.

The game’s premise is excellent — centuries after the colonisation of Mars, contact has been lost with Earth and the corporations exploiting the Red Planet and its water have devolved into a series of squabbling, decaying colonies fighting with each other.

It’s an engaging and interesting idea which the game largely fails to capitalise fully on, unfortunately.

You play Zachariah Mancer, an adept of the art of Technomancy — with the ability to channel energy into electrical force. Yes, that includes being able to electrify your weapons. No, it’s not nearly as badass as it sounds, unfortunately.

The overall presentation of the game is oddly uneven — the graphics are very good and it looks great generally, but the voice acting is terrible for the most part, with inflections in the wrong places. It really makes you appreciate exactly how hard it is to make a top-tier video game, and how falling down in something like the voice acting can hold the entire package back.

The game sits in an odd space — it’s more polished and better put together than your average indie title, but it’s not a AAA release from a major studio either. It’s like the video game equivalent of a straight-to-video movie that turns out to be better than you’d expected, but still has a few flaws so it’s also apparent why you haven’t seen ads for it on the side of every bus in town either.

I think that confirms there is life on Mars.

There’s quite a few logical inconsistencies in the set-up of the game — for example, Technomancers are treated as being some kind of Jedi-like cabal of uber-warriors, yet even on easy mode I often found myself getting messed up by random goons (this was, however, rectified in a patch released just before completing this review, to be fair).

Also, the guns in the game (available as a secondary weapon for the rogue fighting style only) overheat after a few shots, which is just absurd. Furthermore, one of the fighting styles literally involves attacking people with an industrial shifting spanner — something which is only awesome if you’re exploring an underwater dystopia or perhaps caught up in some kind of Zombie Apocalypse.

Combat doesn’t flow particularly well and levelling up doesn’t seem to make much difference either — sure, the fighting looks great, but it’s not a lot of fun to actually implement, unfortunately, especially when you’re outnumbered.

Zachariah’s interactions with people are laughably inconsistent too. For example, after a tense conversation with a local crime boss in which he’s told you in no uncertain terms to get stuffed, you can then spend several minutes asking his opinions on everything from your faction to the war your corporation is involved in.

Similarly, Zachariah alternates between being pleasant to oddly abrasive or even belligerent to NPCs, even if it doesn’t suit the way you’ve been playing the game. The other characters also come across as being a bit like theme park animatronics too, sometimes, which doesn’t help with the immersion either.

Despite the flaws, it’s actually not a terrible game. If you can look past the not-great voice acting and the rough-around-the-edges nature of the whole thing, there’s a decent story with an engaging premise and several worthy ideas in here.

The main questline twists and turn and is rather engaging, combining a search for a way to re-establish contact with Earth and evasion of the corporate secret police which are on your trail.

The actual world itself looks fantastic — from the barren surface of the planet to interiors of the places you visit, too. It’s clear Spiders have put a lot of work into that side of things — it’s just a shame the same level of achievement isn’t apparent across other areas of the game too.

Overall, this isn’t the greatest RPG in the world, but it’s also a long way from being the worst, too.

If you’ve finished playing the major RPGs about at the moment and are hankering for something else to fill the gap until some of the bigger releases on the horizon come out, The Technomancer should fit the bill nicely.

If, on the other hand, if you’re looking at your Unplayed Games Pile Of Shame and thinking you really should make a dent in it before it topples over on top of the cat, then I’d suggest you might want to focus on that first.

The Technomancer is an interesting game, but unless you’re a diehard RPG fan, I would say it’s one to grab on sale rather than right away.

Originally published as A new video game explores life on Mars centuries after human colonisation of the red planet