Martian Gothic: Unification (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.5 stars OK
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 5.6 (2.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Steve Smith
• Reviewed on: 05/25/2000
• Updated on: 05/17/2006
• Released on: 04/30/2000
• Originally published on GameSpot: Martian Gothic: Unification (PC) Review

Martian Gothic: Unification is a third-person action-adventure game that's highly reminiscent of games like Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil, both of which established the popular survival-horror subgenre. As such, Martian Gothic must adhere to two basic rules, just like any good copy of a successful game. First, it must reiterate the best elements from the original - the stuff players like and expect from the genre. And second, it must innovate and push these conventions in enough unprecedented ways to keep the experience challenging and unpredictable.

Martian Gothic actually does a fine job on the second rule by infusing the often-simplistic survival-horror genre with more substantial puzzle-solving. But unfortunately, it fails to deliver the simple but critical pleasures of the genre's classics - good action, suspense, and tight pacing. In striving to emulate the success of those games, Martian Gothic gets it about half right. For every welcome addition it brings to the genre, it never quite executes the feature well enough, or it otherwise neglects some other critical gameplay element.

While some of Martian Gothic's gameplay is the genre's standard third-person shoot-the-zombie fare, the game also attempts to have a hard science-fiction sensibility. Extrapolating from the controversial reports that scientists discovered microfossils on a Martian meteor in 1996, the game's story takes place on a manned base on Mars in 2009. When communications with the base mysteriously cease, a search-and-rescue team sets out. Following the base's last cryptic warning to any possible rescuers ("Stay alone"), your three characters, Karne, Kenzo, and Matlock, search the base separately as they swap objects they find via vacuum tubes around the halls in order to solve the game's many puzzles. In addition to its interesting puzzles, another one of Martian Gothic's good features is that it lets you switch between the three characters at will. Kenzo may have to saw off a dead zombie's body part in order to vac-tube it to Matlock so she can solve a puzzle in another area of the base.

Most survival-horror games are more shooting than solving, but Martian Gothic moves the genre decisively into the adventure category by letting each character hold 18 items at a time, all of which are needed to get beyond the usual assortment of broken machines and locked doors. In fact, since your team can be collectively carrying more than 40 objects at a time, the puzzles in Martian Gothic can be daunting. The game might stump you at several points, which could get frustrating. But at its best moments, when you're assembling several obscure items to fix a computer or to revive some lab equipment, Martian Gothic is effective and enjoyable.

Unfortunately, most of the puzzles lack variety. They often involve finding pass codes or colored passkeys. The pace picks up only in the final stages (you need a rainbow-colored key by then), when some of the stranger items you've been lugging since early in the adventure come into play, and the mystery of the dead base finally unravels.

Continue reading

Compare prices for Martian Gothic: Unification

This product is currently not in stock at any of our online merchants.

Email me when this product is available