When Nintendo launched Metroid Dread in 2021, there was no doubt in our minds that it would inspire more fast-paced, gritty Metroidvanias later down the road. MARS 2120 is one such title; a sci-fi romp that attempts to capture the same magic that made Dread so special, but ultimately falls at almost every hurdle.

It starts off strong, taking place on the surface of Mars where you’re fleeing from an avalanche of rocks and rubble. It’s exciting stuff, but even during this introductory sequence, something about the controls just felt off. You’re blessed with a double-jump ability right from the start, but executing it never feels quite natural enough considering how often you’ll need to use it throughout the game. It’s not bad, as such, but it feels a bit too floaty for our liking.

Sadly, things get worse when you start to encounter enemies. These range from basic humanoid creatures to flying monstrosities, but none of them possess any genuine sense of threat. By default, you have two primary methods of attack: a long-range energy gun, and a basic melee combo. Aiming the gun requires the use of the right analogue stick — kind of similar to the side-scrolling segments in Nier Automata — but it’s so erratic and jittery that it makes locking onto enemies a needlessly frustrating chore.

Back to the enemies themselves, these things just don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing half the time. Often, they’ll just stand there like statues waiting for you to attack, while other times you need only glance in their direction before they dive at you. It’s maddeningly unpredictable, but not in a way that’s conducive to an enjoyable experience; instead of providing engaging combat encounters, enemies merely feel like annoying obstacles.

The boss fights are no better; these sequences often require you to simply pump them full of bullets to stagger them before laying into them with a few melee combos. They’ll have maybe two or three attacks to memorise, but rarely did we feel like we were being challenged in any meaningful way.

Credit where it’s due, the game looks pretty nice. It’s not a stunner, and the obvious drop in resolution for the Switch can be jarring, but there’s some genuine care put into the environments. The Ice Cave in particular, with frozen walls that shimmer as you move past, looks very pretty. Sadly, the layout is quite basic compared to some of the more accomplished Metroidvanias on the market, and yet the game is so vague at pointing you in the right direction that you’ll still wind up getting lost at frequent intervals. A short cutscene might play to indicate that you’ve unlocked a door, but which door? Where is it? We spent far too long traipsing back and forth to locate our next objective, when a simple marker or waypoint system would have alleviated this completely.

We commend Mars 2120 for what it does do well. It gets a few things right: the general aesthetic is on point, the ambient music is pleasant, and some of the upgrades you’ll pick up in your journey are pretty cool. But failing to nail the basic traits that make a Metroidvania means that we can't recommend this one.