In the early days of the Switch, it was actually surprising how scarce Metroidvanias were on the system. While there were some outstanding ones relatively early on, it took quite some time for there to be a fairly diverse roster. In the years since though, there have been plenty of them on the system, ranging both in terms of their style and general quality, but nowadays the Switch boasts pretty fair depth in the genre.

Coming in with a sci-fi feel, and perhaps not-so-subtly ripping off elements of Metroid in a few areas, we now have MARS 2120. Sent to investigate a distress call from a Mars colony, you’ll predictably find out that the situation is a mess, and with your skills, wits, and an ever-increasing arsenal of elemental weapon modification it’s up to you to sort things out. While the Metroidvania genre obviously has games that will leverage elements from Nintendo’s iconic series, I can’t say most do it quite so blatantly, though unfortunately without anywhere near the same commitment to polish and overall quality.

Right out of the gate, I was frustrated by the fact that there was nothing to indicate what your capabilities were, or how to use them. While the stock melee attack was predictably there, it wasn’t until I simply started trying every button that I figured out I also had a ranged weapon attack. Even then it wasn’t until I got more desperate and tried using the right joystick that I found out you could aim with it twin-stick style. This lack of refinement, failing to address something so commonly done in games now that you take it for granted, got things off to a poor start and unfortunately that isn’t where the issues stopped. In general, combat doesn’t tend to be very satisfying since you can pretty well just spam your melee attacks when you get up close and be quite effective the majority of the time. Your upgrades, more often than not, will just help you acquire skills you’d normally think would be part of your arsenal by default, but I suppose that’s fine even if disappointing. There are some highlights with some of the boss battles, but I also found you could cheese some of them pretty easily so those are on the inconsistent side overall.

In general, this just feels like a rushed effort. There are elements in place that could work better if given more polish and refinement, but as-is they’re lackluster and quite often sloppily implemented. The fact that it works so hard to directly mimic elements of Metroid also doesn’t help since that inevitably invites comparisons, and this isn’t an effort capable of rolling at that level. That leaves you with an experience that perhaps people who simply love to play anything in the genre may choose to choke down at times and tolerate, but that would get placed behind plenty of other indie efforts in the genre on the Switch that simply do it all better.