I agree, the forced combat parts in Catalyst are the worst parts of the game. The final boss wasn’t too bad for me but there was one part where you were forced to fight ~30 enemies and that was awful. Glad it only happened once.
I guess for me, in the original I’d always miss a jump or run into a wall and then I’d have no momentum to do any other moves. So I was constantly slowly climbing ladders or walking up stairs. I think Catalyst was more forgiving because I was actually able to chain moves together and build real momentum. That made the game much more fun.
Definitely seems like an inspiration. I agree though, this isn’t exactly a unique premise. The Antonio Banderas movie Automata also has the same plot. But Automata has more cyberpunk visuals than Mars Express.
I’m curious about this too. I wish I knew if the admin had some other account (like on mastodon or something) just so he could tell us whether it’s coming back or not.
I think Disobey is a better song but I agree, I can’t just listen to ODDKO songs. I can only listen to them while watching their music videos.