I thought Mars War Logs was a good effort at a reasonable price.
I liked the choice of limited scope, finally you are not trying to save the world and become a demigod in the process. Whatever ending you choose, it’s questionable whether you made the right choice and it’s not obvious that everyone’s lives will be better as a result. I prefer these type of rpgs, it makes it more real and engaging.

The setting is also well chosen, the locations make sense, and the lack of an open-world environment and the resulting limitations don’t bother me.
There is an actual diary in the game, which presents the events the player goes through with a bit more personal touch than a simple list in the quest log would (although this exists as well).

There are a lot of things which work well in the game, i believe.
There is a three-tiered, three-layered skill tree. The skills make sense… one reviewer complained that the renegade skills are useless and the technomancy ultimate skill makes the game relatively easy. I played it through on hard difficulty with hardly any point in the technomancy branch. It is worth mentioning that you cannot gain sufficient levels to max two branches. I finished the game at lvl 26. You get 2 points per level and you can sink 36 points in one branch. Also, you cannot redistribute skill points (or i haven’t found out how).
The game has a crafting system: basically you can apply modifications to your existing weapon and armor, and also make traps, bombs, health and fluid -the game’s equivalent of mana- injections. At least on hard difficulty, crafting is necessary, and it never seems like an afterthought or “just another feature”.
You can also acquire feats: you gain 1 point per level to use for feats. The cost of feats range from 2 to 6 and some of them are absolutely critical to get – like the chance to create the best upgrades in the game.
You can recycle items, transform components, all designed with utility in mind.
When you compare the game with basically any modern rpg, the lack of item variety is quite stringent. I think this fits well with the setting and the story, although it might displease players accustomed to endless items like “Adamantium Falchion of Haste” and such.

The combat is interesting, and there are several fights in the game where it is quite challenging. As the reviewer mentioned, it is mainly melee, although you have options like dodging, reaction hit, throwing sand in the enemy’s eye, attacking from behind for a more powerful hit, breaking defensive stance of your enemy, which are all useful, and sooner or later, necessary skills to use.
You can prepare fights laying traps and also there is a basic stealth mechanic, which allows you to take down some of the enemies while not alerting them to your presence. As most things in the game, it is not an extensively developed and crucial mechanic like in Deus Ex for example, but it is highly useful. Even if you can eliminate only one enemy before the combat starts, it can mean a lot wrt. the outcome of the fight, especially if those eliminated are militia with shields or technomancers. There were a few instances (including one in the later stages in the game), where i managed to take down an entire room silently.
Combat is also tactical, as you can interrupt the fight to do one of two things. For one, you can give orders to your companion. Playing around with this option can transform your companion from a useless meatbag into a moderately competent one.
Even so, your companion serves two main purposes in battle: assisting you in more quickly eliminating a blinded/wounded enemy or tanking a strong one, while you slowly whittle down the opposition. Secondly, you can assign actions to the 0-9 keys. I never had any problems with keyboard-acrobatics, as i never used more than 5 actions in one single battle; and if i needed to use one more extensively, i could remap it from 9 to 1, for example.

While the combat is interesting, it can be quite tiresome, especially in the second part of the game, because of the constant respawns. I never figured out what triggered them. I also made the choice of not finishing off most enemies (you just defeat enemies in battle, you have to make the decision yourself whether to terminate them for some serum – the game’s currency -, or leave them writhing on the ground). The individual areas are not that large, load times are small, door-opening, wall-jumping animations can be skipped. Consequently the back-and-forth didn’t bother me nearly as much as the respawns.

The characters range from interesting (Bob, for example), through downright weird characters, with murky motivations (and the case of Mary for example would occupy an army of psychologists for several years), to simple quest-facilitators. This range is what makes it interesting and realistic, though, and most of the backstories and quests fit well with the overall narrative. The tradition of naming Aurora citizens using virtues is an interesting tidbit, with names like Innocence, Fidelity, etc. As expected, some characters are worthy of their names, in other cases it’s ironical, even funny. You can have a single companion at any time; there are several to choose from during the game, and there are also several romance subplots.
(I wonder whether it is a commentary on me, that i haven’t managed to romance either one of my female companions? )
The voice acting, while not stellar, is adequate. The problems i’ve noticed are not with the delivery, but with the script, having a few odd phrasings and even a few illogical statements from characters.

The graphics is the point where it shows the most that this is not a AAA title. The brownish/reddish palette makes the surroundings look appropriately desolate and Mars-like, and the character faces are relatively well done. You will notice however that there are a lot (a *lot*) of duplicate assets… crates, ladders, doors, etc. or npcs you don’t interact with. This lessens immersion considerably.
In some cases you might say it’s quite beautiful (late afternoon looking out of the yard of the prison camp, you can see a sandstorm coming over the cliffs).
I did not have issues getting stuck, walking through items, or other engine problems. I daresay that it is one of the least buggy games i played recently. I’m a bit surprised that the reviewer had such a different experience with such an objective issue.

It might seem obvious, but it is worth mentioning that there is no multiplayer or coop option in the game.

I think you’ve noticed tht i liked the game. I started the game with reasonable and realistic expectations and didn’t feel let down. I consider that it was worth the money, i commend the developers for their effort, and i’m looking forward to more such games from them.

I just hope this doesn’t mean that the single player aspect of games is going to go neglected next generation. I don’t always want to spend my gaming time in an online fragbox or group grind-fest.

In any case, I’m hoping on two things for next gen consoles:

1. Heavily concentrate on digital distribution of all games and (most importantly),
2. Apply heavy price discounts to those games (e.g. prices relfected in Steam, Gamersgate, Greenmangaming, etc).

If that can be done, I bet piracy will go down and game sales will go up. I can’t even remember the last time I used my optical drive to install software on my PC. The same should be done against consoles.