Mars: War Logs on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information

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An Intense Cyberpunk Rpg On the Red Planet! Mars War Logs takes you to Mars, nearly a century after the cataclysm that threw the planet and its colonists into chaos. Water has become the most precious resource on the arid red planet, with a few companies fighting a perpetual war for its control.

Mars: War Logs is a rpg, rpg, action, action, sci-fi and sci-fi game developed by Spiders and published by Focus Entertainment.
Released on April 26th 2013 is available only on Windows in 8 languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish - Spain, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian and Traditional Chinese.

It has received 2,851 reviews of which 2,135 were positive and 716 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.3 out of 10. 😊

The game is currently priced at 0.99€ on Steam with a 80% discount.

The Steam community has classified Mars: War Logs into these genres:

RPG RPG Action Action Sci-fi Sci-fi Third Person Third Person Mars Mars Cyberpunk Cyberpunk Singleplayer Singleplayer Action RPG Action RPG Story Rich Story Rich Adventure Adventure Post-apocalyptic Post-apocalyptic Crafting Crafting Atmospheric Atmospheric Open World Open World Romance Romance Choices Matter Choices Matter

Media & Screenshots

Get an in-depth look at Mars: War Logs through various videos and screenshots.

System requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows

OS *:WINDOWS XP SP3/WINDOWS VISTA SP2/WINDOWS 7/WINDOWS 8
Processor:AMD/INTEL DUAL-CORE 2.2 GHZ
Memory:2048 MB RAM
Graphics:512 MB 100% DIRECTX 9 AND SHADERS 4.0 COMPATIBLE
DirectX®:9.0
Hard Drive:3 GB HD space
Sound:DIRECTX 9 COMPATIBLE
Additional:INTERNET CONNECTION REQUIRED FOR THE GAME ACTIVATION

User reviews & Ratings

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

March 2025

“The last pieces started coming together when I realized that he was a fugitive… He’d risked it all to be free.” The premise behind Mars: War Logs is one that is existentially terrifying for me, as someone who has always been petrified of space and its inexplicable vastness. Around a century prior to the events of the game, humans had begun to colonize Mars, but lost all contact with Earth due to a devastating solar storm. Left to fend for themselves with finite supplies and political factions jockeying for power, the governing bodies of the Red Planet began to consume themselves, and their own people, in their tide of corruption. Undesirables are left to mutate and turn into ghoulish caricatures of what they once were in the unforgiving solar radiation, outside of the dome. In the upper echelons of society rest the Technomancers, a group of volatile and terminally unstable "magicians" who can command electricity. The game is full of political drama, philosophical conundrums, striking characters, and engaging third-person action that draws on melee, ranged, and magical combat. It is a short game that can be completed in under 12 hours, but every one of those hours counts; the pacing is perfect, the story is never too slow nor too fast, and every action has a consequence. A pacifist run is recommended! TL;DR? I have never much cared for science fiction, but decided to give this game a go because I love Spiders, and was looking for something short and digestible to play. I’m glad I left my comfort zone and booted up Mars , as it, from the very start, enraptured me. Act 1 follows the escape of our heroes, Act 2 reckons with their actions while dodging the oppressive regime hunting them down, and Act 3 can go in two different ways, depending on your choices. PROS: + The characters. I’ve led every Spiders review heretofore with this point, and with good reason. Mars has a memorable, compelling, and realistic (to a fault) cast of characters. Even if a character makes a frustrating decision, or something that may rankle us as either the player or as Roy, it doesn’t come out of nowhere; every character is defined, and has their own place in the world. + The combat is fast, satisfying, and simple. I usually don’t play mages or mage-adjacent characters, but the technomancy tree was great fun. + Innocence’s “war logs” is a unique and refreshing take on the dynamic between the protagonist and the deuteragonist. + The game’s landscape and soundscape convey the gritty environments of an apocalyptic Mars. + While Act 1 and the overwhelming majority of Act 2 are linear, your choices at the conclusion of Act 2 can catapult you into wildly different scenarios. Even on my second playthrough, Act 3 still felt fresh and engaging, with different quest resolutions, scenarios, and dialogues. + The story is paced to perfection. + Consumables have importance. You’ll need to be aware of what you have and the best times to make use of it. + Companions can be issued basic, yet helpful, commands during battle through the tactics menu. CONS: - There can be issues on W10 or W11. - Combat in confined spaces such as tunnels, corridors and caves can be claustrophobic. - The difference between Medium and Hard difficulty is marked, yet Hard and Extreme aren’t too different from one another. - When looting an enemy, a crate, or a pile of supplies, a box overlays the screen, and you have to manually close it. Reflections Our story begins through the eyes of young Innocence Smith, an unfortunate soul hand-picked to be cannon fodder for the relentless war machine. He is being taken to a POW camp, and narrowly escapes being victimized by a sadistic contingent of prisoners due to the intervention of a certain Roy ‘Temperance’, our protagonist. We soon learn that Roy intends to leave the prison camp, and enlists the young man to help him do just that. Weaponizing the secrets of his past – the fact that he himself once belonged to the ranks of the Technomancers, but escaped – Roy and his protégé escape from the tyranny of Camp 19 and find themselves in the sandy desolation of Shadowlair, a post-apocalyptic industrial hellscape of a shantytown. Dogged by the pawns of the police state all throughout, Roy and Innocence fight their way through the city, on a quest for vengeance, discovery, and purpose. As I mentioned above, the story being told through Innocence’s diary – his war logs – positions Roy as both the protagonist and the deuteragonist in a way; we are him, and at the same time, we experience him through a lost, scared, but hopeful child who lionizes him as a hero. One thing that Spiders has repeatedly excelled at is creating characters that I actually care about. Immediately, we are thrust into this world as if we are familiar with it, and can quickly acclimate ourselves to its lore through conversations, codices, and exploration. We become familiar with the political horror of Mars through Roy himself; in experiencing it through his eyes, rather than through needless exposition, we are able to be more immediately immersed into the world. Innocence’s diary likewise provides us with the very real sense that our every action and word has a consequence, whether we are aware of it or not, whether we like it or not. The virtue name of the young Innocence is apt, and Roy’s abandoned virtue name, Temperance, is granted its own meaning through its abandonment. Spiders' protagonists have never been a blank slate, so to speak. We are introduced to them as they are, and as a player, we enjoy shared agency. While we cannot define their pasts, we can shape their futures and trajectory through the dialogue options we select and the side quests we pursue. I have seen a considerable amount of rancour surrounding Spiders’ RPGs and the way that they treat their protagonists, but personally, I find something special in this shared agency. Roy’s past as a deeply independent renegade, a runaway and a troublemaker is an immutable reality. It underlines and defines his actions, and it justifies and rationalizes his concern for Innocence, no matter what path you take. How we take these traits, consider them, and make them relevant is up to us as the player. In this middle ground, between receiving creation and encouraging creation, is where the true magic of Spiders’ characters lay. They are remarkable on their own, beyond us, and they become personal and important within us. Final Words & Verdict As I am working through Spiders’ catalogue, I find it hard to believe that Mars: War Logs predated Bound by Flame . Where the latter felt unsure, unpolished and awkward, as though it were the studio’s first attempt at an RPG, Mars was a miniature masterpiece. It can be played from start to finish, with all side quests completed, in less than 12 hours, and yet it doesn’t feel rushed, nor do any of the plot beats overstay their welcome. The story is poignant, concise, and immediately confronting; the psychological and cosmic horror of being stranded on Mars for generations, with neither contact with nor supplies from the Earth. Couple this feeling of isolation and hopelessness with the weight of caring for and protecting another person, someone who is even more lost and rootless than yourself, and you are presented with a masterpiece. Overall Rating ★★★★★ Story ★★★★★ Gameplay ★★★★☆ Graphics ★★★★☆ Sound Design ★★★★★ Replay Value ★★★☆☆ Difficulty ★★★★⯪ PC Requirements ★★★★☆ Game Length ★★★★★ Visit [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/damseldirect]Damsel Direct for more gunpowder, magic, and chaos.

Sept. 2024

An action RPG in the style of post-Kotor Bioware and The Witcher... with a fraction of the budget. I dunno, I kinda like it. It's lackluster in almost every aspect, but I do dig the aesthetics: it has that Chronicles of Riddick junker future thing going on. You are mostly a passive actor in the story, and the pacing is all over the place trying to fit in this 10-hour ride. Also, the combat takes some getting used to, and even then you'll most likely find it incredibly wonky. Worth it on a discount, just don't expect to be blown away.

Aug. 2024

Warning: almost 40 yo casual gamer here. You've been warned! This game is OLD. Yes, it's obvious if you look at the screenshots. We know it. Does it play well? Do I like the atmosphere? YES! It runs basically on any normal computer maxed out due to its age with 60+ FPS. Played only an hour or so, so far it's fine. Update: It's a basic action-adventure game with some strange gameplay ideas (like a gun is "just a one-use skill in combat) and mediocre story with a few lame-ish "twists" (that are not really twists anyway. It does have a great system of your actions and the things you say changing the whole game's story and the NPCs relation towards you. This is rare nowadays. Overall it's a good game to play, but not an AAA for sure.

July 2024

Mars: War Logs is an action RPG with lots of choices that impact the story in different ways. While this is a good game, it has some issues that come from its lower budget in comparison with its ambitions. It follows Roy's story as he escapes from a prison on Mars and how he gets involved with the conflicts that plague the treacherous red planet. The story starts with Innocence, a kid who was a prisoner of war, as he was about to get attacked after arriving at a work camp prison. Roy, the protagonist, saved the kid in one of the most badass ways possible, just staring at a group of thugs in total silence. After saving him, both worked together to escape from prison and beyond that, like getting entangled with the Resistance and the tyranny of the technomancers. The game’s story is only 3 chapters and gives the player lots of choices, it’s structured linearly without any branching like in Witcher 2, in which some content is left unexplored depending on the player’s decision. In Mars: War Logs the player visits every place in each playthrough but some choices have an impact on what allies Roy has and the fate of some characters. Some choices are meaningful to the plot, while others like different romance partners for Roy are there to add flavour. The best part is the role-playing opportunities the player has with some side quests that are chained together, depending on how you complete them, you can cut short that quest line. For completionists it might seem as a bad thing. One quest as an example has Roy helping a dog trainer because dogs are acting feral with everyone. So you can go to ask the opinion of a medic that tells him to kill every feral dog before a virus, that makes them feral, has time to spread. As a player you can just end the quest there or try to search for another option. The game didn’t tell me that there was an optional way to finish the quest, it flowed through the dialogue choices I made. As for the combat, the best anyone can say about it is that everything works. I know that doesn’t sound like the best compliment but it’s fine when considering how ambitious the game is. It has stealth, melee combat, range combat, items and technomancy that works like electric magic. There are other systems that impact combat, like crafting and upgrading equipment. Crating can be an essential skill, especially when paired with skills that buffed grenades and range combat. In my time playing the game I was crafting lots of ammunition and grenades. There are some nitpicks, like the difficulty curve’s highest point is at the beginning of the game when Roy doesn’t have all of his combat options yet and depending on the difficulty, enemies can hit hard. Although Roy has more than enough skills at the start to fight back, some, like the parry and roll, can be tricky. Rolling lacks invulnerability frames, unlike in From Software’s games. Rolling is there as a fast way to move away, still there are perks that can enhance it like rolling further away and reducing damage while it. Parrying like everything else is explained in tutorials at the beginning but getting used to parrying can be tricky because the narrow windows of time to parry when enemies are going to attack you. Also parry can be a menace to enemies by stunning them. Parrying is really fun in most games, it might be hard to pull off the timing but it feels satisfying when done correctly. At last one small issue is getting stuck momentarily in geometry like something is off when starting to run. The graphics cannot match the ambition the game conveys throughout the experience, nor it’s up to par with contemporaries. However, that doesn’t mean that the visuals look bad, characters are detailed, and the environments are serviceable in representing the harshness of the red planet. While there might be some complaints about the environments for being too similar, everywhere is mostly rust, stone and sand. Even the cutscenes have a certain flair because of its budget, some cutscenes aren’t highly animated. While another cutscene has a detailed one-on-one fight and that one specifically can be jarring because it was the start of a riot while only focusing on two persons fighting without anyone around. I thought a riot meant more than two people. For the most part, the sounds in the game are passable but nothing amazing. Music and sounds work fine for the moment-to-moment gameplay but I don’t think anyone will care for it after closing the game. The game shines with its role-playing throughout the 10 hours or so it lasts, without completing many sidequests. Although short, there is some replay value by role-playing while getting most side quests available. Despite the occasional moment getting stuck in the geometry and lower production values than even older games in the same generation, like Mass Effect, it remains a fun action RPG with enjoyable moment-to-moment combat. Its story, although short, gives agency to the player with its many decisions. The combat and story make it a compelling game worth playing through and that’s why I recommend it.

July 2024

It is quite engaging and definitely a good old one. Can be a bit repetitive at times and has a few unpolished details, no wonder being and older game, but I recommend it wholeheartedly! Combat can be a bit tedious at times, but quite fun once you get the hang of it. All in all it was great fun and in a way, a very unique experience!

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Last Updates

Steam data	14 April 2025 04:04
SteamSpy data	09 April 2025 20:52
Steam price	17 April 2025 12:43
Steam reviews	16 April 2025 12:08

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