The Final Station (2016)

A rather disappointing 2D platform zombie/survival game that showed a lot of promise.

I saw this game a while ago and was looking forward to play it as the it looked really good, it seemed to have a pretty nice idea and looked very promising.

Sadly the game falls short. The visuals are nice, the pixel art is of hight quality. The theming does look also good. But the game is not that fun to play. The story behind it is a standard zombie outbreak of some sort - nobody knows what's going on really apart from the fact that people are turning to zombie like creatures. And it turns out you're the last train driver around tasked with transporting something somewhere for the military.

The game is divided basically into two parts - in one you're riding the train from station to station taking care of the machine and managing your supplies to keep your passenger alive in the other you explore each station in search for survivors, supplies and a code to let you go through.

The train riding part serves as sort of exposition - your passengers talk about what they heard and what they feel is going on - but it's mostly gossip you don't pay much attention to. Some of them are wounded, some hungry - you need to distribute food and med kits among them to let them survive. If they survive to a specific station you'll get a reward. Apart from that you need to keep an eye for a specific element and tweak it so the train doesn't stop. It's an interesting idea I guess but it feels just so boring. Totally unnecessary.

The second part of the game is exploration. Once you meet a station you need to find a lock code to progress further. You have a gun, fists, later on shotgun and machine gun. The ammunition is very little so you need to make every shot count. That is until you learn you can punch the zombies to death and with the use of ladders which zombies can't climb - well to say I was definitely not lacking the ammo. There is no jumping and while the levels look cool they feel very much the same. You walk left, kill some zombies, collect supplies, climb down, progress through some kind of underground area and you're back at the train. Every time it's the same thing.

The number of zombies is also quite limited so it feels a bit same all the way. I've finished it - but I can't say I enjoyed every moment of it. Maybe first half an hour - later on I was just curious to see how it ends - and the ending was especially disappointing.

Overall a decent game that just didn't catch my attention and felt it had much more potential than it turned out. Would probably not recommend.

This game is available on PC and console, and I have to say, the console port leaves something to be desired. First off all, the text is very small, making it difficult to read on a television across the room. Second, it's very difficult to tell when what option you have selected in menus and other interfaces - there's barely any noticeable difference and forums about this game are rife with people accidentally deleting their game data because of it (thankfully I managed to avoid this).

That said, I did like a lot about the game. You play a train operator who has to get passengers to one station or another. It starts out on a seemingly normal day, but then something happens, and you have to fight to survive at each stop. The main gameplay loop involves getting to a station, fighting monsters with a combination of weapons and your fists, scouring for supplies like first aid kits, food, and materials to make bullets, finding passengers to take with you and finding the code to let you get back on the train and go to the next station. On the trips between stations you need to keep your passengers healthy and do maintenance on the train so it keeps moving. The story is mostly told through notes you find and the conversations of your passengers. I enjoyed the combat and the multi-tasking elements. The game was very stingy with the tutorial though. A lot of the time you had to guess how to do the train maintenance mini games, and it never provided any button prompts to let you know how to do things like switch weapons or craft materials.

This could have been a better experience with some basic UI fixes.

The Final Station

Graphics
* Aesthetics: Pixel style. Interesting style of background. Nothing bad, but nothing impressive either. Average (2/4)
* Functionality: Minimal UI. Doesn't require a lot of them anyway. Average (2/4)
* Impressive Moment: Guardian, Tunnel and the main city was pretty interesting in terms of visual aesthetics. +2
Total: 6

Audio
* Background: Minimal BGM with good ambient. Again, nothing bad, nothing impressive. Average (2/4)
* Effects: Very average. Some repeating fxs. Average (2/4)
* Impressive Moment: Nothing I can immediately remember. +0
Total: 4

Narrative
* Aesthetics: I take it's a Russian/CIS region game? These people do post-apocalypse right. Unbelievable. I liked each people I rescue had somewhat interesting personality, and the way they interact each other. Good (4/4)
* Storyline: Some aspects of the game were not explained, and there's nowhere to find out about them. It is definitely not self-contained in terms of storyline, but it's not like you can read more about them in other media. It's just vague. For some people it would be Average(2/4), but for me it's Good (4/4)
* Impressive Moment: The whole latter part of the game. Fascinating. +2
Total: 10 (For those who like clear storyline with enough explanation, 8)

Gameplay
* Platformer Part: Linear gameplay without a lot of options, but it is solid. It's interesting and there's always a way to do it better. Good (4/4)
* Train Run Part: I find the train module minigames horrendous. They are repetitive, and it's not helping me listening to the story. Managing resources were fun, especially medkits because you have to save them in Platformer part to use them in Train Run part. Average (2/4)
* Impressive Moment: There are some interesting parts. +1
* Replayability: There's not a lot of reasons to replay the game. +0
Total: 7

Summary
Story heavy indie game. Great aesthetics but not enough clarity in the story. No reason to replay.

Final Score: 6.75