When Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars was announced in April, I was pretty stoked.

I own a signed copy of The Martian, and I'd breezed through the Project Hail Mary novel in just a few days. I love science fiction, and Andy Weir's brand of irreverent and easy-to-read prose makes his novels (and their film adaptations) entertaining, fun, and surprisingly emotionally affecting.

It's disappointing then, that Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars, an immersive mixed reality experience that tells a new tie-in story in Ryland Grace and Rocky's planet-saving journey, is boring, janky, and kind of pointless.

I don't want to spoil the story of the novel, film, or game, but to touch on it briefly: in Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars, you play as Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling's character in the film), an unlikely astronaut on a mission to save Earth and Erid, the homeworld of his new friend (and alien) Rocky.

The mixed reality experience tells a previously untold chapter of the story, a pivotal voyage in which Rocky and Grace must work together to keep their starship Hail Mary intact as they bring a world-saving cargo to Erid's star, 40 Eridani A.

I'm intentionally omitting details from both the novel and Journey Among the Stars. What's important to know is that this game or experience had an opportunity to add to what has been one of the best recent examples of relationship-based science fiction. The friendship between Rocky and Ryland is deeply engaging and affecting.

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