by If you’re an intergalactic space miner by trade, there are worse fates than getting stranded on a giant red planet rich with subterranean minerals, danger, and excitement. With nowhere to go but deeper and deeper beneath the planet’s surface, Mines of Mars teases you along into its Metroid-style adventure by putting up subtle barriers and giving you a means to overcome them: mining. The balance between gathering, crafting, and exploring is well tuned to draw you in, even if other aspects of navigating the planetscape feel weak by comparison.
You start your adventure by discovering a mysterious robot-run surface facility that’s decked out with useful buildings, which replenish your assorted systems like health, ammo, jetpack fuel, and more. Equipped with a weak blaster and a pickaxe, your initial excursions into the dark realm below are limited. You can only carry so much and venture so far before you run out of fuel, and the monstrous inhabitants you encounter are eager to get their claws on you, as well.
Hauling the raw materials you uncover up to the surface, where you can smelt ore and cut gems, lets you amass enough of both to upgrade your weapons and gear—which is where Mines of Mars sets its hooks in. Most upgrades help you overcome obstacles in some way, allowing you to push deeper. Whether it’s a new helmet that expands your field of view, an enhanced suit that lets you withstand hotter temperatures closer to the planet’s core, or a more powerful blaster to zap the tougher foes you encounter, every new piece of kit holds some untold promise of what’s to come. Questing for the raw materials to build such gear quickly becomes addictive.
As enjoyable as it can be once you set into a steady routine, Mines of Mars has issues that prove irritating enough to trip you up along the way. The control scheme, for one, is unintuitive and unresponsive. You can get around, but it’s hard to do so without accidentally expending precious jetpack fuel when you don’t intend to. Tricky aiming also makes combat more of a cumbersome chore than a worthwhile aspect of the gameplay, and minor glitches pop up too, ranging from your jetpack refusing to shut off to warp portals zipping you back and forth unpredictably. It’s a shame, since these unpleasant quirks mar an otherwise enjoyable experience.
The bottom line. Mines of Mars puts a cool building and crafting spin on the side-scrolling action genre, though its fun is whittled down a bit by control issues and minor bugs.
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