Mars: War Logs

The game is set on the colonized planet of Mars, a century after a great, cataclysmic upheaval called the Turmoil. Having lost all communication with Earth, powerful water guilds fight over the scarce sources of water, the most valuable resource on the red planet. Two of the most powerful of these are Aurora and Abundance. The player takes on the role of "Roy" Temperance, an Auroran man with a mysterious past, who finds himself caught between a variety of powerful factions. During his journey, Roy must survive the hostile nature of Mars and battle a variety of mutant creatures created by the planet's radioactive environment.

The game begins at Camp 19, an Abundance POW camp far away from the front. Roy teams up with a young prisoner named Innocence; working together, they eventually manage to escape the camp aboard a prison train. During the prison break, Roy is forced to kill Sean, an Abundance technomancer in charge of the camp. Technomancers are specially trained soldiers armed with pre-Turmoil technology that allows them to channel and discharge electricity generated by their bodies. Equipping Sean's gloves, Roy reveals himself to Innocence as a renegade technomancer himself.

Mars: War Logs received a mixed reception, with the PC version scoring 59 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 32 reviews and 59.50% on GameRankings based on 20 reviews. The Xbox 360 version scored 61 out of 100 based on six reviews on Metacritic, and 61.67% based on six reviews on GameRankings, while the PlayStation 3 version scored 60.00% based on two reviews on GameRankings.

IGN praised the game as one that "shoots for the moon", saying it is "an attempt to pull off an epic in the style of Mass Effect or The Witcher 2 on a fraction of the budget." However, they criticized the game's "clumsily" handled story line, silly "virtue" names like Morality or Charity, stiff characters and a lack of focus, but stated that while it "isn't a great RPG, it is at least the seed of one – and a seed with some surprisingly green shoots sticking out of it." PC Gamer bemoaned the need to constantly "wrestle with an exuberant camera" and joked that the "combat can't remember if this is a third-person game or one where you don't really need to see anything at all." They also criticized the UI design, "stance" gimmick, uncanny valley facial animation, subtlety-free script, and a rushed final act.