MARS 2120 shows quite a bit of promise from the six-person team that is QUByte Interactive. I loved utilizing hypermobility right from the start so I could explore the beautiful yet dangerous facility, and I’m excited to see what the finished metroidvania looks like later this year. In the meantime, check out the documentary of the game's development process!
Chumps Preview is a special kind of post where we unofficially preview games in Early Access, Beta, or are otherwise “unfinished.” This kind of preview is meant to be a first impression rather than a definitive review where we provide a rating to determine a game’s value. As such, we fully expect a game covered in a Chumps Preview to have room for improvement, some bugginess/incompleteness, and other features associated with similar games in the category.
My first few minutes with QUByte Interactive’s MARS 2120 felt intimately familiar. An interstellar thematic. A female protagonist. Firing guns at alien creatures. Obtaining upgrades along the way. Sound familiar? I think it does – all of that sounds like the classic Metroid approach to creating a metroidvania. I don’t take issue when developers put their own unique spins on existing thematics that are a hit amongst players. These reimaginations fuel our nostalgia while giving us another opportunity to play in an environment that we have grown to love.
QUByte Interactive is a small independent developer out of Brazil. They’ve been working on MARS 2120 for the past few years, giving their Early Access players additional previews and insights into their game development process. They’ve given us the opportunity to pay a bit of MARS 2120 ahead of its late-2024 release window. In the short hour or so I have spent in MARS 2120 it feels like I’m playing an SNES-era Metroid game, but Samus Aran is nowhere to be found.
I was placed in the shoes of Anna “Thirteen” Charlotte when starting MARS 2120. I learned more about Anna from MARS 2120’s Steam page over anything I encountered in-game. Despite the beautifully animated first-person perspective that was the game’s opening cutscene, much of my playthrough involved me exploring a desolate laboratory. My character’s purpose and background were hidden. I would imagine that the full release will assuredly flesh out the universe of MARS 2120. The audiologs I managed to find in several biomes gave me the smallest glimpse into the in-game universe. All I know is that something went horribly wrong, and it looked like I had to get to the bottom of it.
MARS 2120’s combat is a blend of ranged and melee attacks, which is a departure from most metroidvanias I’ve played as of late. Usually, one will be prioritized more than the other. Here, I started out with a slow-firing gun and simple melee attacks. My gun improved when getting the purple powers, but whacking enemies with melee bonks proved to be more effective than my gun for 90% of the enemies. Again, going to assume that the full release will broaden my combat prowess and strength, but the imbalance between melee and ranged attacks’ effectiveness is worth noting.
My first boss battle occurred around 30 minutes in – a gigantic hulk of a machine that slammed the ground and filled the air with lasers. At the start of the battle, a miniature cinematic showing off the machine’s ground slam while Anna deftly jumped back, just narrowly missing the resultant shockwaves. It was a great start to the battle and set the stage for something exhilarating. The boss had a simple set of attacks, though, so it didn’t end up being as impactful as the start of the battle. My gun did next to no damage against this thing – instead, I just waited out its attacks and walloped it while it was stunned.
I later came across a gigantic ice spider and a golem that chased me through two different rooms while destroying everything in its path. The spider fight was weird, as my goal wasn’t to whittle its health away by typical attacks. Instead, I was to attack it at certain points and stagger it backwards until it fell into an open pit. This objective wasn’t the most clear, as I died to its attacks several times before I figured out that it was impervious to my regular attacks.
I get the feeling that MARS 2120 is setting itself up for some stellar boss fights. Hopefully, the later stage bosses end up being more challenging and requiring the use of both melee and ranged attacks. I can’t wait to see what else I uncover and eventually fight in the full game.
Aside from the few combat encounters, I spent a good amount of time exploring MARS 2120’s laboratory. I was taken through several miniature biomes, such as an area full of electric traps and a cold storage area chock full of frozen enemies and hazards that could freeze me solid. I came across a few suit upgrades thus far – largely focused on traversal. During my preview period, I could teleport through walls, smack the ground to create a purple force field that caused objects to float, a blink ability, and the power to teleport along electricity lines.
The traversal is where MARS 2120 shines as a metroidvania. It kicks off with Anna having the double jump and ground dash already unlocked and only enhances her superhuman powers of navigating the world in a hypermobile fashion. The only other metroidvania that has started off on a mobile note like this has been DOOMBLADE, which I loved. MARS 2120 put me right into the action from the start and gave me tools to move around the world in fluid and frenetic ways. I cannot wait to see what other traversal upgrades I am to uncover in the full game – hopefully they continue feeling refreshing while adding a bit of challenge!
There weren’t that many secrets to find this early in my playthrough, but the few I came across ended up being helpful in permanently unlocking passive skills that increased things like my reload time and my health. Oddly enough, the process of unlocking these skills isn’t as clearly communicated as it should be. The only way I can “unlock” skills is by coming across the skills in the world, going to a save point, and then paying to activate the skill with experience I’ve gathered.
I enjoyed exploring MARS 2120’s gorgeous 2.5D map. It creatively utilized different camera angles similar to Metal Gear Solid to make it seem like I was moving through a deep world that is still constrained to a 2D plane. Finding the occasional secret (err, skill?) in each biome rewarded me for exploring every inch of the map, but there were moments where I wished that the biomes had something unique, like an Easter Egg directly tied to the MARS 2120 universe.
As I look forward to the future of MARS 2120 (as in, its upcoming full release), I’m excited to explore the rest of the facility learn more about Anna and the reasons behind the Mars facility entering its current ruined state. I hope that its UI and introductions/tutorials are given some additional polish, too.
MARS 2120 shows quite a bit of promise from the six-person team that is QUByte Interactive. I loved utilizing hypermobility right from the start so I could explore the beautiful yet dangerous facility, and I’m excited to see what the finished metroidvania looks like later this year. In the meantime, check out the documentary of the game’s development process!
