Unearthing Mars VR Reviews

I thought it was a game. However, this is supposed to be a story. Yet it's very poorly written and it's the worst voice acting that I've ever heard...no exaggeration.

A really slow start (chapter 1-5) but the story progression picks up during the last half of the game. It is not an action game but does provide a pretty epic feel during the opening and later part of the game (though, short). Voice acting is kinda bad but decent at other times, but there are small moments towards the end of the game that are really cool to experience in VR, because you're not just watching a story being told, you're experiencing the central characters journey and emotions, that although are not anything exceptional, it still has an impact to experiencing it as the character does. Music and sound effects are great and if you can stick past the first half of the game and not go into it expecting an action adventure game, it's a pretty decently put together, story-driven VR experience that is rare right now. Give it a chance.

No replay value and no decision making. Pretty much everything you do is inconsequential, to the point that the game feels like an extended tutorial for an actual game. More of a slightly interactive experience than a game. It's really only a 90 minute experience or so, so as far as value proposition goes, there are far better options available, but at the end of the day, if you're someone who invested into a full VR setup, it's an experience that's worth the $10 or whatever. At the end of the day, I do reccomend it. The graphics are among the best I've seen, you get a variety of controls, and the story is enough to keep your interest for the time it takes to get through it. Iff the developers add a reasonable amount of content to the base setup work they've done, they could have a AAA hit, it's that well done.

The game appears to be dead, No updates in 5 years and no apparent response from the devs in the forums. Too bad. The gameplay wasn't the best, but the visuals were pretty good. There was great promise here if the devs had stuck with it. As it is, I could only get to part 7 and could go no further.

If you are down to a lightweight adventure game with a nice fictional mystery theme, e.g. the mars's past, were there life forms before, possible traces of ancient civilizations, etc., you shouldn't skip this game. But you should also be ready to be patient for the common typical glitches of early vr games and lack of free locomotion in order to enjoy this experience. I liked it and finished it in three hours in one session, enjoying everything possible. It gave me the exact same taste as another vr game "Ryte - The Eye of Atlantis" with its fictional mysterious story, light puzzles, matching nice background music, nice views only possible to enjoy in VR, and of course, typical indie vr game flaws.

A real mismatch of a game. The overall idea is quite good but is very poorly implemented. It seems at times like a series of disjointed ideas and gameplay mechanics just bolted together in order to produce a finished game. There are some impressive graphics at times along with some decent puzzle solving but this is coupled with levels of frustrating game mechanics and poor movement options, with little thought to providing an immersive experience. Overall I would only recommend if buying it cheap in a sale.

[h1]Experienced on the Oculus Rift[/h1] You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/iXB4pOupQnY This is really a space-themed walking simulator, without the walking. You teleport in some parts of this game, but mostly you're just watching the cinematic scenes play out. The controls are awful and you can tell this is a PSVR port. There are also some light puzzle elements. The game takes about 90 minutes to complete. This could have been a much better game, if they had hired better voice actors. One of the main characters sounds almost as robotic as the actual voiced robot in the game. Unfortunately, the writers of this story did not help her out. There is not much depth to the characters or to the plot. In fact, the story starts out very much by the numbers, then suddenly takes a turn into left field. Just when the story starts getting weird and interesting, the game ends. You do have snap turning, but you have to press in your joysticks. You control a Mars rover-type vehicle, but the controls are terrible. You have like an overhead view of the vehicle while you're controlling it. Then the voiced parts have you clicking one of 2-3 answers to respond. Overall, the controls are pretty bad except for the puzzle portions. While some puzzles were too easy, some of them were nice. Definitely casual type puzzles so don't worry if you are bad at puzzles. Overall, I did enjoy this game, but I often felt like I was fighting against the controls. There's also terrible wave shooting sections in the game, but thankfully, they are not too long. The game ran smoothly on my 1060 GTX and I was getting a steady 90 frames per second. The visuals, while not great, still hold up in 2020. [b]Rate 6/10. Buy on deep sale recommendation only. Definitely better than the average walking simulator in VR.[/b]

Had no problems with this game/story, as it is more a story that you experience than a game. I quite enjoyed the experience but would say it is too short. Completed in less than 2.3 hours but did find it engaging. Not something I will go back to but worth sharing with a friend.

I picked it up in Summersale and am at Level 4 now. I love it so far. I always assumed that with VR the entertainment industry would develop new formats that are more experience orientated in addition to the very fast and stressful game-play oriented formats that are the mayority right now. "Unearthing Mars" is very much in that direction, it gives you time to take in the environment and slowly develops the story. The graphics of the "War of the worlds" waveshooter first Level were truly breathtaking and among the best VR experiences I have had so far. What could be done better? Well, the abrupt level endings would be my main critique-- all levels so far just abruptly ended without a visualization of the end and then the next level would load... the transition could be made more organic so that the immersion is not destroyed each time a level i completed. Keep up the good work.

It's completely not what I was expecting. It had technical problems from the start, like haptics getting stuck on for extended periods, when I first started it didn't detect my HMD height correctly and I was a giant and had to restart everything. It doesn't tell you which chapters are a seated experience and which aren't, which ruins the seated parts as you're sat in a seat in the game and stood up in real life. If it just gave you a heads up for each chapter then you could move a chair into place before it starts. You have to teleport to predesignated spots which appear very slowly at times making it frustrating to move around. There's a part where you think you'll be driving a Mars Rover and it turns out you're floating in the air behind it with a remote control driving it like you would an RC car, totally ruining any excitement of driving a Mars Rover on Mars. The voice acting isn't great, the voice for the robot is laughable, it sounds like a badly voiced Dalek. The lip syncing with the character models is terrible. The game seems to be designed more for children than adults in my opinion. The graphics are OK, but I was expecting better, higher res textures etc. No matter how much I wanted to enjoy this game, I just couldn't, which is a shame, as the trailer made me really look forward to playing it.