Cool open world survival game AND YOU GET TO BE ON MARS! But too bad devs are killing it so its unplayable.. Classic ♥♥♥♥♥♥

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This review is intended to be informational, but since steam forces a rating, choosing not recommended on the basis of bugs, glitches, missing content, and the inability to set up private servers(?)

• Immersive environment with lower gravity, faster solar cycles, caves and derelict structures to explore
  
• Base building, complete with devices and technology to enhance your gear, weaponry, and survival
  
• Skill trees for passive upgrades and crafting recipes
  
• A campaign that can be completed solo or with friends
  
• Optional PvP and a competitive extraction event
  
• Six primary weapons with a few modular upgrade options
  
• A metal gear style final boss

• Horrible Unreal Engine optimization. Massive frame drops, stutter, and pop-in even on modern hardware. Lower resolution textures with visible stretching and pixilation, especially for the horizon.
  
• No vehicular transportation (supposedly removed due to never working properly?). Traversing the map on foot is a slog
  
• Glitchy enemy and weapon behaviors. Collision problems (snakes stuck underground, being pushed through the elevator floor to your death due to clipping against its outer frame), bullet accuracy (sniper was nearly useless at long range, shotgun was still effective at rifle distance ??)
  
• Very few building parts and features to choose from, so almost all player bases look the same. Despite catering to "build anywhere," you are limited by proximity to existing structures and certain landscape geometry (frustrating when you want to build cliffside but the supports won't attach)
  
• Very limited enemy variety - spider, mantis, snake, excluding the final boss
  
• Low playerbase throughout its lifetime; no support after live service ends to self-host or play offline - another dead game?
  
• Only one ambient looping track for the entire game

There's fun to be had in the dead of space scrambling for resources and piecing together the mystery of what happened to a politically divided Martian surface. Memories does a good job of nailing the space-suit immersion with minimal HUD and generous stamina gauges, and gives players a wide enough map to tease exploration and adventure. There's only one little problem... there's not much behind the curtain when all is said and done.

The early gameplay loop was solid. Open your map, continue to objective, loot, craft, and survive. Having to erect makeshift shelter and progressively upgrade your gear ticked all the survival crafter boxes and made for a satisfying time. The issue, however, was more toward mid-game. This overwhelming sense of deja-vu... New outposts looked all too similar to the last ones, and indeed, even the corpses of the fallen were arranged in exactly the same ways in exactly the same types of buildings. Recycled tiles are unfortunately immersion breaking, and the lack of unique treasure to discover removed any incentive to explore off the objective path. Every mission is a fetch quest for a data file you probably won't read.

To give the game credit, there were at least two unique locations with underground dungeons. One way in, only one way out. You had to traverse treacherous terrain, hordes of deadly enemies, and do so in decent time lest your air and recovery items run out. (Ironically, the latter could be entirely skipped because it contained no necessary data to collect, a design oversight, or unimplemented quest?). Regardless, the repetitive fetch-quests culminated in a surprising final confrontation with baby's first metal gear: A near invincible mech with tiny vulnerable gaps in its armor. After emptying the equivalent of an entire arsenal's worth of ammunition, you get the final item needed to power your rocket and complete your data-retrieval mission. Your reward is a final audio transmission on a job well done and... a sandbox to run around in whilst you try to fill out your skill tree.

Post game is particularly lacking. The PvP has no rewards in a game focused on survival, only serving as a severe annoyance to have to run to your corpse and retrieve your fallen items (assuming another player doesn't steal them). The FLOPS king-of-the-hill competition wasn't as effective as mowing down death mechs in the game's most difficult locations, because at least the latter awarded you with more resources to craft with. Ultimately, unless you are a completionist or love sandbox building challenges, there's nothing left to do. MoM released on 3/12/20 and its last update was 50 months ago on 5/12/20... where did the developers go? Huston, we have a problem.

If you own this game, it's your last chance to mess around: Servers pull the plug on 6/25/24. If you're reading this out of curiosity, well, you didn't really miss much-- there is a full walkthrough on youtube to peruse. If you really insist on acquiring it, search to see if modders have made any progress in local server emulation; it seems the game will be unplayable otherwise.

Achievement Hunters: Grind (100x enemies, resources) + completionist achievements: Complete the game, complete all skill trees, wear the ultimate armor. Apparently, achievements only work on official servers, as no player-hosted locations are verified to work. That means you have until 6/25 to finish.

Normally this would require over 100 hours. But it's possible to do it in 30 or less. Players discovered that pressing drop+equip with a keyboard macro resulted in a pile of the item, a duplication exploit. This means, the ultimate armor could be passed around to bypass the resource requirements, weapons could be duped to generate infinite ammo, and as I discovered, duplicating weapons -> logging out and back in -> allowed infinite weapon mods for desynthesis, generating all the high-tier resources you could possibly need for construction.

Most importantly, the golden tablet you receive for one mission completion (digs up a treasure that contains random blueprints) is the prime use of this - infinite blueprints to try to farm for the skilltree. If you don't abuse this, you have to rely on the power plant terminals which refresh daily(?) and/or loot from environmental containers, which are highly unreliable. It seems a few BP's are rarer than others and may become a bottleneck to completion.

All of this is documented on trueachievements.com, so check there. Lastly, save all of your compiled data, as it's needed for the rocket launch. I put mine in crates which despawned (or someone took?) and had to retrace my steps for half of the missions. Not fun.

100x snakes - kill them every time you see one. This is likely to be the last achievement you won't have. The best place to farm them is in the tundra, near the tower objective, where the elevator rides up to. Watch out though, all of the enemies there are strong, and you can be overwhelmed by drones, too. Build a base nearby to abuse respawning. Also, be aware snakes can get stuck underground. Solution? Craft a bayonetta and stab the ground where you hear them. They will spark if done right and die without ever putting up a fight. It's very tedious, however.

If you're missing acid for the rocket, farm the biodome central of the map. Use a laser cutter to harvest. As a bonus, venomous snakes spawn in the canyon below and around it if you want to try farming two for one. Be warned that they may not spawn often enough, however.

With exploit and players passing down items, I think it's possible in 24 hours. Even faster in co-op since you can shred enemies and the final boss. Good luck.