I will be straight-up honest with you. I did not enjoy Mission Critical: Mars. We found it at the thrift store and thought we’d love it. (I mean, we love computers and cooperative games; what could go wrong? Apparently a lot.) But we just didn’t. However, that doesn’t mean your family won’t. So, read on to decide if this is a good game for your shelf.
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Mission Critical: Mars is a game that is … not for the weak of heart. For the right personality, it is an amazing game; alas, I lack that personality. It’s a bit like Pandemic, in that certain people have to be in certain places to do things. However, it’s all run by a computer, and certain tasks, the surprise ones, are timed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t do well with timed tasks – I’m even slow cleaning my house! However, if you can take the stress of timed tasks, this is a cooperative game.
Okay, if you’re still with me, now to the nitty-gritty. There’s a modestly-sized board depicting a spaceship with different locations. (If you have trouble fitting some of the giant game boards on your table, there’s no fear with this game.) There’s the cockpit, lab, gym (go here to reduce stress), sleeping quarters (this location helps you reduce fatigue), galley (to reduce hunger), storage, radiation shelter, lander, three airlocks, and three EVA stations.
How to play Mission Critical: Mars
Up to four people can play Mission Critical: Mars. Everybody gets a pawn, three status markers, an Astronaut Health card, and the Emergency Procedure cards are divided up between the players. Using the Astronaut Health card and the three status markers, each player tracks the health of their astronaut – hunger, stress, and fatigue. Tasks can’t be completed if any status is in the top red box. Emergency procedures have stricter requirements for some attributes for some locations. Furthermore, you can’t complete the landing procedure unless everyone’s health is universally in the green. This may not sound too difficult, but when you roll the 8-sided die for moving around the spaceship, each of the 5’s (there are three of them) makes you move one of your health trackers closer to red. We very quickly had an exceptionally hard time keeping our health manageable.
There are also Mission Task cards; completion of most of them gives you more time to land at the end of the game. These require you to go to a certain location, and often make a certain roll, before entering in the completion code. Two of the cards are actually used to improve health, but it’s only of one attribute, for one player, and just by one box.
Playing Mission Critical: Mars with the computer
Then there is the computer. The computer makes it more difficult to cheat. Usually, in this sort of game, we at least start by just not using whatever timer is there, and give ourselves as much time as we require. Personally, I am really good at figuring out the best way to do things, but I need time. If I know that time is limited, I panic, my brain shuts down, and it’s overall just not a very fun or productive experience.
However, there are still ways to cheat and make the game more playable. You could ignore the health trackers, and just say that everyone always has their health in the green, and nothing moves it toward the red. Also, you just have a code to enter into the computer.
I didn’t think of it the first time we played it, but the computer has no way of knowing where you are, or whether you rolled correctly. So you could just make it a requirement to get to the appropriate area and discard the rolling requirement. You could also just “pretend” that you’re in the correct location, and just enter the code into the computer. So, there are ways to cheat, just not my preferred way of removing the timed element.
For ages eight and up
Mission Critical: MARS claims to be for ages 8 and up. Usually, my family is very capable of playing games rated for much older kids than we have, but not this one. At least, not as you’re supposed to play this game. We will try this game again, but we will try various levels of cheating. This isn’t a game we’ll be keeping, but I like knowing that we can make it more playable for us.
Want to watch our attempts at playing Mission Critical: Mars? Check out the various ways we cheated to make the game playable for my family!