The Martian VR Experience

2 fps EDIT: this review was made with 16gb of ram, I have since upgraded to 64 gigs and the FPS goes up to 90-120. This game is hogging as much ram as it can, so that's why everybody has low frames, am I going to recommend it? No, it should be free, mechanics are jank, the only part I liked was driving the rover, and it should not take 64 gigs of ram to get a good framerate.

Too bad... This is probably my favorite BOOK of all time. The movie was ok but poor casting and pacing made it underwhelming. The book is just a different animal - its a light hearted techno thriller vs the action movie Hollywood tried to produce. And this "experience" is nothing but a 10 minute advertisement / summary of the movie. Basically its a handful of key moments of the story with 2D clips and 4 (give or take based on definition of game) interactive mini games in between.

That being said, you feel mostly disappointed because of the potential this could have had. The visuals clearly had some effort go into them and, for a few seconds (literally), in a few key spots it actually does enhance the overall book if you are a fan. The opening walking to the door is neat, first mini game (sorting) is terrible but the room itself was well done, crane mini game was ok, driving was actually kind of fun, ship thing was ok and the space part was pretty fun. All very restricted and all very, very short. But the designing of the rooms / environments were good enough that i just wondered why bother when they really did nothing with it.

I typically don't mind spending a few dollars even if its for a short experience but solely because i felt this was nothing more than an advertisement for the movie i am refunding since i already paid for the movie. They could take out the cut scenes and add a Steam Home environment size camp with access to the different mini games (and even logs) and a few basic things to explore and then i would have kept it as a short "The Martian Experience". But in its current form...

I bought this for $5 and knew going into it that it was a short 15 - 20 minute VR experience. I enjoyed the overall VR Mars experience and the recap of the movie. The activities were fairly bland, but I expected that. Overall it was a mildly interesting experience, but I was glad it was only $5.

Great simulation with amazing graphics. The sim is short, about 20 min, but worth it. Great for introducing VR to your friends and family. I will play again if only for the great VR immersion experience.

I'm impressed at just how bad this was.

The bad arm kinematics was mildly amusing. The scenes were minimally interactive. You can pick up rocks or press buttons/pull switches.

This is the worst interpretation of The Martian since the first audio book where "ASCII" was read as "ASC2".

Let me just start by saying I'm a huge fan of The Martian book and movie.

This is a pretty terrible VR experience all in all. There are even some inconsistenies with the VR Experience's "story" as compared to the movie and the book.

There are 3-4 interactive portions where you push buttons, throw things and "Iron Man" your way to the Hermes at the end of the movie.

The rest is video clips from the movie randomly appearing in front of you.

This is not worth any amount of money even if you're a huge fan. It should have been a free promotional packin with the movie or just free period. I can't even recommend getting it on sale unless it's free.

I bought the game because I liked the book and I even liked the movie, despite knowing the book beforehand. Also I am aware that there are very few good VR games ready yet. Still, I thought, 10€ should be ok.
Wow. A few minutes into the "game", I thought Ive never seen a worse game before.

This "experience" consists of a few cuts from the movie (yes, 2d movie in a 3d environment) and a few mini"games" that don't really have anything to do with anything.

This is literaly a perfect example of how not do make a good VR game.

I thought this would be a good "vr experience" considering I enjoyed the book and movie alot. I thought it would really bring you into Mars. What I ended up with was short sections of the movie played on flat screen in front of you and a pretty terrible series of mini games. Completely do not recommend for any reason.

Does not portray the movie in anyway except for the movie cutscenes. Story isn't like the movie at all, don't know about the book. Too simple gameplay. Is this really all you could do? Sure graphics look good but I don't know if that should be the main point. Didn't know it was a thing that you could tear your spaceship apart with 3 huge buttons in the center of the console.

When I first heard about this I thought "yes of course!". The story of Mark Watney (which I loved in book and movie form) would be a *perfect* match for VR tech, and Vive Roomscale in particular. I was impatiently waiting for it to be released...and finally, when it came out this month, I immediately bought it (didn't really care about the price).

Well... I do like the graphics. For the most part feels like a polished product visually; some parts even look great, both on Mars and in space. There are moments when I like the "interactive movie" atmosphere a lot; I think the combination of VR scenes and clips from the movie is very neat and really works.

However when I think what this could have been (given the source material) I am sorry to say it looks like a trainwreck. The very few actual VR scenes, while not bad in terms of visual immersion, are, for the most part, just mind-numbingly boring. Sorting potatoes? Pushing buttons? Come on!!! Where is the roomscale "walk on Mars"? Come to think of it, I would have been perfectly happy just to be able to sit in the cramped rover (without a weird time limit) and, well, EXPERIENCE it in VR... with may be a Martian dust storm going on outside. But whoever made this decided not to include *anything* even remotely awe-inspiring. Instead, they went with a small collection of stupid mini-games that feel like a first grader came up with the ideas for them.

In short: Somebody put in a lot of effort to make it beautiful-looking, but forgot to actually include the "Martian Experience". I am hugely disappointed and can't recommend it at all. Honestly, I don't care so much that I paid too much for this... to me it is much worse that they completely ruined this great opportunity.

This is a failure. Maybe I should have realized it says "experience" in the title.
It felt like about 15 min of content. About one minutes worth was really cool.
The rest was a waste of time. The most interactivity was throwing potatoes into
buckets.

Something like 25 minutes of "VR" experience. But, from those 20 minutes, at least 10 are 2d movies on planes (taken from original movie). Overall quality is also quite bad - just look at cubemp for sky in first minutes - badly photoshopped. Textures of Mars are pixelized.. particle effects are also quite bad.. and so on.. and on.. a list continues.. overall, inconsistent assets that look like they were taken from assetstore. I don't know who made this, but looks more like a one man project. This is really a bad publicity for VR , that can give a lot more.

This is shovelware garbage designed only to get a quick $20 out of you. It's mostly movie segments with a few playable bits that are just uninspired. Literally one of them is "push this colored button". Ugh.

Requested refund. 19.99 is far far too much for what turns out to be such a shallow promotional product. Even if I were prompted to try this for free in a cinema lobby or at some kind of convention - which is exactly the kind of product this feels like - I would come away extremely underwhelmed, and probably confused as to what the fuss over VR is.

It is mostly an FMV game, in which you watch clips from the movie floating in front of you, with the lightest of VR gameplay possible tacked on at intervals. From the very first moments alarm bells start ringing when you're prompted to awkwardly hold out your arms and look at a small target to calibrate. Even worse are follow-up moments in which you're a disembodied camera speeding over a landscape, then disorientatingly locked to the character's motion. I was presented with a table of potatoes that I could pick up and throw into buckets, but was at a loss as to what to do once there was nothing left, as just sat around looking for more "game" until it eventually decided to load up another few clips. This game seems to be full of bad choices that break VR Design 101, I would not be using this as a representation of VR's capabilites to anyone.

Even by the already overpriced standards of VR titles, this is a complete ripoff, there is no value here.

Watch my review walkthrough video of The Martian VR Experience in 1080p and Virtual Reality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6ozi7M2yXk

This is The Martian VR Experience HTC Vive Gameplay in Virtual Reality! Wow guys, we are actually gonna travel into space and land on Mars in VR, perform tasks in our spaceship and explore space and zero gravity in Virtual Reality like never before! The Martian VR Experience is an long awaited VR title, sponsored by huge movie companies, and the immersion is promised to be amazing in VR. Doesn´t that sound great?

Well... it is, but its also a BIG lie! I'm not going to spoil this gameplay for you until you have seen my video, but all I can say is that I am disappointed.

VERY DISAPPOINTED!

Anyhow, judge for yourself, but The Martian VR Experience is actually supposed to be a big title. This is a hyped-up VR experience available both for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift as well as Playstation VR. But unfortunately it is not even close to what it could have been...

Im sorry, but this "game" doesnt deserve a positive review. Maybe for 5 Eur, but not 20. Shame on you, guys!

So this is low effort garbage.

Most of the time you're sitting down watching shorts from the movie. When you do get to interact with anything, it is the most simplistic of minigames you could imagine. Throwing potatos. Moving Rocks. Shifting levers. etc.

From start to finish it barely took me 20 minutes and most of that time I was bored. This is a glorified advertisement for the movie and the fact that it's being charged for is pretty much a crime. You get more fun from Steam's "The Lab" and that's free.

On the plus side, the graphics are ok? I guess?

Would not recommend.

First off, neat experience but that is just about it. It was only 4 different short 5 minute segments unfortunatly... Pratically no replay unless you enjoy throwing potatoes and drive a rover around.

The audience just isn't right. I'd expect something like this at a convention or at a movie theatre to get people interested in a movie or the possibilities. For first timers, this is a real wow moment. For those that have had their vives and building up a library, not at all.

Did I have fun? Yes and no. It is a shame that the PSVR crippled you to sit in a seat though opposed to actually walking around. Though on the other hand, it was really HQ compared to others out there and I did feel a bit of a rush during one part.

Would I recommend it? For $5 or less, sure. Not $20.

I have just purchased and played the martian experience..Great graphics and interactive experience, how vr should be. BUT..the $20.00 price tag is ludicrous, from start to end was +- 15 minutes, I really hope there are updates coming as I feel I have been knocked over the head and robbed. It is a nouveau cuisine vr experience, looks good, costs plenty but there is very little of it . IF I was a retailer doing a demo I would use this to demo VR, but as a "game" for someone who already has a HMD I would not even recommend it at 1/2 the price.

I haven't read any reviews/previews on this, but I did see the movie. So what's my opinion? I can summarize it in three words : short but sweet!

It's definitely a high quality title, but it's also a short experience that will (only) last a little longer than 20 minutes. High quality because of the presentation, the beautiful visuals made with UE4, the high immersion, the way they built up the mini-chapters (they get better as the experience progresses), and the way they alternate between VR and clips from the movie. Very well-made and certainly a good title to demo to your friends that never tried VR before.

Is it perfect? Nothing is. Personally I feel that you're pushed forward even when you would like to enjoy the scenery a little longer. So after a few minutes, the screen fades to black and you are pushed into the next chapter of the experience. There's zero freedom. It could also be confusing for people that haven't seen the movie. I can imagine they won't always know what's going on.

Last, yes for 20 minutes it's very expensive. This is the same comment that the Everest VR Experience received and I have to agree with that. Price should have been lower.

If you love the Everest experience, you will certainly love this one too. If you didn't or you thought it was too expensive, then skip this one. Personally, I love them both, but I can't really recommend because of the price and the short duration of this (wonderful) experience.

Gee this is a tough one.

Price - 20mins for $20us is a bit steep. Then I suppose you got to expect that when companies are aiming at a small target. Still not worth it in my eyes.

Replay - zero to maybe.

For the vive this is greatly cut back for the psvr. It really made me think how lucky I am to own a vive.

Anyway the review - if you get motion sickness steer clear as there are a few flying with no controlling movement moments. There is 4 areas that you sit and do very small tasks to move the story on. Example throw big potatoes into the big bucket and small potatoes in the small bucket. Yep that's how exciting this experience is. Besides that you watch quick 5sec clips that are displayed like big screen beta all over the place to make it seem exciting I suppose

I give this the thumbs down. Didn't go much on the movie and I think the movie is better than this!