When Nintendo came out The Horror of Metroid In 2021, we have no doubt that it will inspire many more fast and powerful Metroidvanias to come. MARS 2120 is such a title; a sci-fi film that tries to capture the magical power that makes Dread special, but ultimately fails at almost every hurdle.
It starts off strong, taking place on the surface of Mars, where you’re running away from an avalanche of rocks and rubble. It’s fun, but even in this introductory sequence, there’s something about the controls that just feels turn off. You’re blessed with the ability to double jump from the get-go, but executing it never feels natural enough considering how often you need to use it throughout the game. It’s not bad, per se, but it feels a little too bloated for our tastes.
Sadly, things get worse once you start encountering enemies. They range from basic humanoids to flying monsters, but none of them pose any real sense of threat. By default, you have two main methods of attack: a long-range energy gun and a basic melee combo. Aiming requires the use of the right analog stick—much like the side-scrolling segments in Nier Auto — but it’s so inconsistent and inconsistent that it makes locking onto enemies an unnecessarily frustrating chore.
Back to the enemies themselves, these things have no idea what they’re doing half the time. Often they just stand there like statues waiting for you to attack, while other times you just have to glance in their direction for them to pounce on you. They’re unpredictable, but not in a way that’s conducive to an enjoyable experience; instead of providing engaging combat encounters, the enemies just feel like annoying obstacles.
Boss fights aren’t much better; these sequences often require you to just fire bullets at them to stun them before hitting them with a few melee combos. They might require memorizing two or three attacks, but rarely did we feel challenged in any meaningful way.
Granted, the game looks pretty good. It’s not a stunning game, and the obvious drop in resolution on the Switch can be frustrating, but there’s some real care put into the environments. The Ice Cave in particular, with its icy walls that sparkle as you move through them, looks really nice. Sadly, the layout is pretty basic compared to some of the more polished Metroidvanias on the market, but the game is so vague about pointing you in the right direction that you’ll still ended up getting lost at frequent intervals. A short cutscene might play to indicate that you’ve unlocked a door, but which door? Where is it? We spent way too much time going back and forth to determine our next objective, when a simple waypoint or marker system would have alleviated this entirely.
We give Mars 2120 credit for what it does well. It gets a few things right: the general aesthetic is spot on, the soundtrack is pleasant, and some of the upgrades you’ll pick up along the way are pretty cool. But failing to nail the fundamentals that make a Metroidvania what it is means we can’t recommend it.
