Winking VR's Unearthing Mars doubles down on one of the few entertaining elements of the original, but it still doesn't manage to summon much excitement from it.
Bradley Ramsey: "The original Unearthing Mars had a bit of an identity crisis on PlayStation VR. The story had potential, but the gameplay was fractured into too many different parts for it to feel like a cohesive whole.
One thing everyone did love was a short shooting section near the end of the title. The developers took this concept and expanded it into a full sequel with Unearthing Mars 2: The Ancient War. Does this new approach make for a fun rail shooter, or will this war be forgotten? Let’s find out."
Not as good as other rail shooters like Time Crises 1 + 2 and House of the Dead but definitely a lot better than the first game.
its fun to play with aim controller..game has its flaws..but its a decent game..and yes, a big improvement over the first game
The game's okay. Gameplay was fine, graphics were great, bosses were good and White Gun is cool but the human characters were flat, the plot is just as nonsensical as the first game, enemies can feel like bullet sponges, and environments can feel pretty samey. The soundtrack is an aquired taste. Unless you're one of those who liked MvC:Infinite's marvel theme, you'll find the soundtrack forgettable.
Also, replay value is lackluster. Score and difficulty barely rewards the player.
Rob Pitt writes: Back in March 2017, Winking Entertainment published Unearthing Mars for the PSVR headset. It was a two-hour first-person adventure in which you, and your team, land on Mars in order to solve some puzzles and engage in some FPS moments. Personally, I never played the original game but I have heard it was met with a lukewarm reception due to its slow nature until the final combat moments.
As such, Winking Entertainment has just published Unearthing Mars 2: The Ancient War which flips the mechanics on their head and this time focuses heavily on combat and action over puzzles and exploration.
While I still find it dumbfounding that you still managed to like The Walker more than this game, I do have to admit that Unearthing Mars 2 is a definitive improvement over the first game.
Although, I still don't find the story to be that great, both in the first and second game. By now, they should just drop the story completely and just focus more making the gameplay fun and polished.
TBH, if I could go back, I'd probably drop The Walker to around a 7 as I did enjoy playing it but I've clearly played more structured and engaging games since. There are a number of games I would probably re-score if I was able too, I might do an article on it at the end of the year and re-rate a few of the games which I either grew fonder of or stopped playing after review.
Regarding this one though, yeah, I never played the first one but I gather the story and slow segments were the major complaint. With this game, the story got rather messy and hard to follow. By the end, I just turned off for the story and went into 'kill anything that moves' mode. It was still a fun game, but it lost me about 3/4 of the way through.
It is a very visually impressive sci-fi themed VR rail shooter.
Well, at least it's better than the first one, that's for sure. But now Winking VR needs to find a way to make Unearthing Mars an actual good rail shooter. The ingredients are there but with no difficulty options, time attack, customization, survival and such, then I don't see this being worth $20.
Is like the opposite of Winking VR's previous released vr shooter The Walker. The Walker has a simple-but-shallow story with content on par with most decent rail shooters but the gameplay is rather barebones with enemies that aren't much fun to fight. Unearthing Mars 2 has an interesting-but-messy story with a somewhat fun gameplay and cool encounters but lacks the quality-of-life additions from many rail shooters, such as score boarss and difficulty options.