REVIEW : Surviving Mars (XBOX Series X)
This game is all about building colonies on the rocky surface of the Red planet. There are volcanoes, Meteors and dus showers all around. This is a complex game about colonizing Mars and surviving while you are building the cities. You will explore the planet, and it involves a lot of gameplay time. Beginners can go for the easy mode, which is relatively simple and good for first-timers. You can always start afresh with the changed mode and difficulty level of the game.
It is a city-building game and can keep you busy and engaged in it. You will manage a lot of things in this one. You will recruit people to gather the materials and start the construction. The game is addictive and challenging. There are a lot of customizations available, and that is amazing. You also need to build power resources like solar energy, water extractors, refineries etc. It is a huge game but needs to work slowly because you will have to take care of bigger colonies and protect them with increasing time. With every new construction, you will have reduced resources. You need to maintain a balance between the two. Pipes will leak later in the game, buildings will harden in red Martian dust and need maintenance, and your precious resources will dwindle. From natural calamities to certain technological breakdowns, it is quite tough to handle everything at once. You can send your rocket to earth for the supply of resources, but that charges points. Maintaining power is something you will need to be worried about. Construction of the Dome requires air and water as well as power. Maintaining an influx of supplies, correcting the ones that break, instituting supply channels and continuously expanding to where the new nodes are can feel like too much at once. At this stage, if anything goes wrong, it is comparatively easier to get it right. Once the people are involved, then it gets chaotic.
It is a science-fiction game and to do two jobs at once is challenging. You have to keep searching for new possibilities and use drones to explore and expand your colonies. You have to keep your colonists alive. There is an element of working according to the budget, which varies from sponsor to sponsor. There is no timer, so you can go at your own pace and see for yourself. It does not come with a guide, and you are on your own from the very beginning. There is no tutorial for anything, and you learn as you explore. This will result in many failures, but that increases the duration of the game, and you can auto-save levels. There is a social side to this game. You also need to take care of the people in the game who are working and living in those colonies and listen to their grievances.
City builder games are better be played on pc, but you will get used to it as the game flows. The soundtrack and the voice assistance are pretty helpful. The graphics are commendable, and the details are nicely done and give a nice feel during the gameplay. There are numerous challenges, but they come along with satisfying feelings as well when you succeed. Sometimes you don’t have anything to do in the game, and you sit there looking at everything. It seems peaceful. Even the navigation is pretty accurate.
REVIEW : Pantsu Hunter: Back to the 90s (PS5)
