Review | Rover Wars: Battle for Mars

Review | Rover Wars: Battle for Mars

It is always nice to write a review for a game from my home country, Belgium. Developer Sakari Games based in Antwerp is behind Rover Wars: Battle for Mars. We have to remain honest here though, despite our national pride. Rover Wars is a very basic experience that misses some exciting elements, that’s the best way to describe it. It didn’t really bore me while playing but there just isn’t much to see and experience.

This is a short-review, our usual the good, mixed and the bad was difficult because of the nature of this game. We played Rover Wars for two hours on Xbox Series X. We also participated in the Rover Wars Xbox launch party stream on Twitch.

Rover Wars basic gameplay is its strength and weakness. You are tasked to destroy the home base of the enemy, by deploying three types of car fighters that spawn from building military bases. Here for me lies the first issue, it lacks enough possibilities to be really challenging. There isn’t enough gameplay depth to warrant replay value. Sure it has local multiplayer fights but this wears out quickly. Don’t get your hopes up, there isn’t an option to battle against online players either. When it comes to single-player content it is a big and hard pass, you’ll be done with the ‘story campaign’ in a very short hour, and trust me the feeling to get more battles from the quick play is almost nonexistent.

Considering the cheap price tag I don’t want to sound overly negative, for example, our pc team wrote a review too when it launched on pc in April 2020. It doesn’t look bad, although I miss more clear visual differences between the three classes. When unleashing a laserbeam power move the destruction and effects are very nicely done. It just misses that spark in gameplay, but as always that’s just my opinion. Maybe the spark will be there for you.

55%

Rover Wars is a cheap fun game to play if you have the friends that can play some battles at home. Playing it alone is a bit too boring, the big solution would have been an online mode but I understand that’s an expensive feature to include. It is a shame that Rover Wars released in a time that Covid stricts options to invite friends. Hopefully, those dark days are over soon so gamers can organise battles against friends.
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