I criticized Deliver Us The Moon for its depiction of a near-future environmental apocalypse. These sorts of apocalyptic depictions of climate change can cause people to take the real-life threat less seriously, since it's slower and less dramatic than the fictional depictions that people see. I tried to give Deliver Us The Moon the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that the developers were maybe going for more of a "overpopulation and depletion of resources" kind of apocalypse, and less of a "anthropogenic climate change due to greenhouse emmissions" apocalypse. However, Deliver Us Mars makes more explicit reference to greenhouse gasses and climate change, so I feel like my earlier criticism is a bit vindicated.

That being said, flashbacks show an Earth that is very much still alive, as opposed to the previous game, which made the Earth look like a barren wasteland. Flashbacks show the character and her family hiking through forests and diving among coral, while talking to each other about how much of a shame it is that the forests and coral are dying off and probably won't exist for very long. As the game goes on, we see extreme weather events, and examples of the damage they can cause and the danger they represent. Deliver Us Mars also highlights some of the socio-economic complications of overpopulation, with clear divides between "haves" and "have-nots".

Overall, I like this depiction of environmental collapse a lot better than in the previous game. It's a much more nuanced and (importantly) accurate depiction of the near future of climate change, and it shows the personal and individual cost of climate change at small scales, rather than making it an apocalyptic, planet-destroying event. It's still blunt and heavy-handed in its delivery, but it's far less exaggerated this time around.

The depiction of climate change is much more accurate and nuanced this time around.

Martian sight-seeing

Deliver Us The Moon felt like it peaked early, with a lot of the first-person, zero-G set pieces. After landing on the moon, so much of the rest of the game was just walking around sterile space station interiors. There was like 1 or 2 short sequences driving a rover on the lunar surface, but that was it. The player hardly got to explore the lunar surface at all.

Deliver Us Mars follows a similar progression path. It starts with zero-G segments on the rocket approaching Mars and a space station in orbit of Mars, before crash-landing on Mars. Then the rest of the game is walking around Mars. Despite this similar progression path, Deliver Us Mars is far less monotonous than its predecessor, as it varies the scenery and gameplay a lot more. There's frequent flashbacks to the protagonist's childhood, in which she hikes, climbs, and scuba-dives with her family in playable vignettes. These sequences are very much on-rails, and don't give the player hardly any freedom of exploration, but they are a welcome break from sterile, claustrophobic white walls.

The player spends more time walking and driving on the Martian surface, instead of claustrophobic space stations.

More importantly, there's a much larger focus on exploring the Martian surface. This takes the form of rover trips between levels, and some outdoor levels that require the player to climb and platform across Martian cliffs and canyons.

I recently played an indie sci-fi game on the PS5 titled Deliver Us The Moon. It was alright. I rather liked the story, and most of the methods that the game uses to deliver that story. It's very similar to Tacoma in terms of how it tells its story, but with a greater emphasis on player-driven problem-solving and puzzles. It's biggest problem, however, is the surprisingly poor performance and frequent technical problems. Even on the PS5, this borderline walking sim was barely able to keep a steady framerate, and I experienced multiple hard crashes.

That being said, I still recommend it for gamers who happen to be fans of hard science fiction, because our options in that particular sub-genre are fairly limited. We have butt-loads of fantasy sci-fi games about space marines shooting aliens or robots, or about dog-fighting in outer space. You know, you're Mass Effects, Halos, Dead Spaces, StarCrafts, Colony Wars, and so on (remember Colony Wars? Man that would be an excellent candidate for a reboot on modern consoles, especially if it includes full VR support!). These are the games that are "sci-fi" in the same way that Star Wars or Transformers or pretty much any comic book movie are "sci-fi" movies.

But as far as the video game equivalents of harder sci-fi movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Arrival or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the well is considerably drier, and most of what we do have is relegated to smaller indie titles. Don't get me wrong, we have some great options! Games like Soma and Outer Wilds are some of my favorite games ever.

So when I see a hard sci-fi game like Deliver Us The Moon pop up on a gaming storefront, I try to make an effort to play it. There's plenty of total flops in this sub-genre, but there's also some real gems. And I think that if Deliver Us The Moon could have its performance stabilized, it might qualify as one of those gems. But this video isn't a review of Deliver Us The Moon. I have a full written review on my personal blog at www.MegaBearsFan.net, if you want to read it. Instead, I want take a few minutes to dive into one particular aspect of the story and premise of Deliver Us The Moon that just kind of grinds my gears. It's a problem that I've seen repeated multiple games and movies that try to address this particular socio-political topic, and I worry that it might be doing more harm than good to the public's perception of this issue.

A big issue that I have with Deliver Us The Moon is its near-future depiction of apocalyptic climate change.

It's really nice to be seeing more pure science fiction games. Not sci-fi action games like Mass Effect or sci-fi horror games like Prey, in which the sci-fi is just incidental set dressing. But actual science fiction games that explore the human condition as it relates to our advancing technology and understanding of the universe. Games like Outer Wilds, Tacoma, Silicon Dreams, Event [0], and others have been a nice distraction from shooting endless hordes of zombies, demons, and robots.

This is especially true considering that most sci-fi movies and TV shows are more action-heavy and less cerebral. While a movie like Arrival or The Martian comes around every few years and totally blows me away, the days of movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind are long gone. Even my beloved Star Trek is trying too hard to look and feel like Star Wars, instead of embracing the low-budget stories and techno-babble that helped make The Next Generation so beloved.

Well, the indie gaming sphere has been pumping out new sci-fi games pretty reliably over the past few years. But they can't all be gems like Outer Wilds. Most are pretty mediocre. Deliver Us The Moon has the potential to be a real gem, but it is held back by poor technical performance (on the PS5) and a final chapter that dragged on and had me more frustrated than contemplative.

The basic concept is that, in the coming decades, humans discover a new isotope of helium on the moon. This isotope is a potent energy source that is mined and processed on the moon, and beamed back to the Earth to supply almost all of humanity's energy needs. However, after years of successful operation (and after humans on Earth have become dependent on the cheap, abundant moon power), the moon colony suddenly shuts down with no word or warning as to why. After years of silence and darkness, our playable character is launched to the moon to figure out why the energy stopped flowing, and to hopefully turn it back on.

In space, no one can hear the game crash

Right off the bat, I was annoyed by the camera controls. Within 10 minutes or so of starting Deliver Us The Moon, I had to go into the settings to increase the camera's sensitivity on the X-axis. Even after doing this, rotating the camera still felt sluggish. I'm not sure how much of this is deliberate. An astronaut in a space suit should feel a bit clunky to move around. But movement and camera panning are different things, and I don't know if clunky movement for an astronaut should translate to sluggish movement by the camera. This wasn't helped by the fact that quickly panning the camera often caused the framerate to stutter (which may also have been a reason for the slow default camera speed).

Earth will be largely without electricity unless we can restore the moon colony.

I was surprised and disappointed by how poorly Deliver Us The Moon performs on the PS5, especially considering that it's a pretty small game that mostly takes place in the confines of a small moon base. It's not like it's rendering a massive open world, or computing enemy pathfinding, or combat A.I., or supporting dozens of players in multiplayer. Yet the framerate is constantly dropping while just walking around the station.

In one case, I walked around a desk to check if the computer had any open emails that I could read, the game just crashed completely. It autosaves frequently, so I only lost a minute or 2 of progress. But still, why does such a simple little game have such horrendous performance problems on a "next-gen" console? I don't know if the PC or XBox versions are this bad, but regardless of which platform you play on, be prepared for crashed, freezes, and framerate drops.