The Final Station

So...this is a difficult one to write. The last station is a bit like a Mcdonald's happy meal: bright, enjoyable while it lasts, but liable to leave a nasty taste in your mouth and a lack of fibre in your gaming diet. It's one of those of games that *a certain kind of gamer* will delight in, as it throws almost every genre cliche you can think of at you, without really trying to tie them together in a satisfying manner. You get: zombies; giant mechs; alien invasions; black goo (scully!); conspiracies; and the possibility that 'it's all actually a dream'. Taking place on an unnamed planet that is a bit like, but not actually, earth (two moons in the sky!), you're a train conductor tasked with getting various cargos to stations while the world around you undergoes its second 'visitation' and is peppered with pods from (space? the govt? Ronald McDonald?) that release a gas (black goo? the 'blight' from the clockwork century novels?) that turns people into (zombies? shamblers? failures of evolution?). The gameplay consists of 2 phases: on the train, you try to keep your passengers alive with medicine and food, all the while bashing buttons to keep the train going. Off the train, you advance, gun in hand, to try to scavenge the essential pin code that will unlock the next bit of track for your train, all the while blasting *zombies* and collecting weps and ammo. The graphics are pixelated, but have some nice parallax background vistas that do a good job of conveying the vast distances the train is meant to be voyaging over. In the beginning, the two sections mesh nicely together, and you slowly get new weps and upgrades from grateful passengers if you keep them alive. However, you reach a ceiling about half way through, and the previously enjoyable zombie blasting becomes a bit wrote, because - if you're like me - you're dying to see where the story goes. And as the hours (about 4-5) tick away, you realise...absolutely nowhere. Graphics 4/5, Gameplay 3/5, Story...1

I have quite mixed feelings about this game. For one, it's very short. It took me approx. 5 hours to finish, and I was dragging. It has zero replayability value. The story-telling is quite good (and the story itself), as is the music. No, scratch that: The music is VERY good. The instict of survival was very strong with this game. The various stories that you find out during your travels add a very nice touch to the game. I have mixed feelings about the chit-chat that was going on during the travels. For one i think that was interesting to know what the passengers are talking about, but on the other hand, it's simply impossible to watch the conversations, because of all the coming and going to attend to the various matters (food/medkits/crafting/communicating with the outside world/maintenance of the train etc.) It's good that the approach of the each stage is different with each level. Brute-force is not always the solution. Some times you have to run from the enemies, sometimes you have to trick them. The ending was one of the worst endings I've ever seen in a videogame. And I do not say this easily. I don't know if the developers run out of ideas, but they truly ruined a - otherwise - fantastic game in my opinion.

This game does a lot of things right. Making you plan out your exploration due to limited supplies, drawing you in, combat, gameplay.... It's really well done. I was sorely disappointed at the length, though. I also think that some of the story should have been fleshed out a *little* bit more. I think they were aiming to be mysterious and cliffhanger-y, but I think they played their cards a little too close to the vest this time. A bit more information would have made things gratifying.

I held off on buying this game for a long time due to mixed reviews here, and elsewhere on the internet. But I am very glad I did get it. The game is short, has some very good level design and simple side-scroller action. There are only a few weapons and items, minimal crafting and some mostly forgettable mini-games. But the music, art and pacing are all excellent, and the game length, although short at about 5 hours, was perfect for keeping me engaged. The high quality design of a lot of different minimal game features made a game that was very enjoyable for me. But the best part for me was the story that is told in bits and pieces. A lot of the criticism for this game that I read was that it was very short, did a poor job of explaining what was going on, and has no replay ability due to set level design. For me, I now realize that a lot the questions I have about the plot are actually scattered all over the game and that I didn't pay enough attention to them.... so now I want to play the whole thing again. I feel that the first time you play this game it is an action side-scroller shooter, and the second time it is going to be a text based puzzle. I do feel that there is room for improvement, I feel that there were some missed opportunities to utilize the environments more, and that some additional background on the world could have added to the game, but all in all it is a fun sidescroller and a fun conspiracy/mystery story.