The Final Station (2016)

I started this 4 years ago during a free trial of xbox game pass and played for a couple hours. I was not impressed. Since it was given for free on xbox gold I decided to continue on from where I left off and relearned how to play. The survival horror gameplay of exploring the stations was fun. There was real tension every time I opened a door. I found punching from ladders to be the most effective tactic, if any were available. The regular zombies were easily defeated with melee attacks, even in tight spaces because I could easily run past them without damage. The big ones took more hits to take down and it seemed like I could not run past without taking hit. The armor zombies could be killed by punching off their helmets then shooting up at point blank range, but I found this to be a waste of ammo and just ran past them instead. Sometimes I killed them with thrown objects. The little fast zombies were the biggest threat and thus I preferred to save thrown objects for them. Most times I shot them 3 times with the pistol/rifle and finished them off with melee, or 1 shotgun blast if there was not enough room to kite. The flaming zombies were best shot once, then run like hell until they exploded. There were a few difficulty spikes that required multiple attempts, and the checkpoint saves were very generous. By the end I had 9 med kits, 20+ pistol ammo, and 20+ shotgun ammo, and I hardly ever used the shotgun. I bought a laser sight but did not see any point to get faster reloads or extended mag.

The train gameplay between stations was not good at all. There was both too much and too little happening at once. I found it very difficult to read what the passengers were saying while also keeping up on the stupid minigames and monitoring their hunger and health. I also didn’t realize there was more stuff to read from the control console until near the end. I really think the story, resource management and minigames should have been separate. It was always only 1 of the minigames per ride, probably to keep it from being too hectic. There was some missed potential there of having to manage all of the minigames at once. I did like the trade off of saving med kits for yourself or using them to keep passengers alive, though food was only needed for the passengers. It would have been more interesting if you also needed to eat food between stations. I kept most passengers alive. I checked their rewards and decided to weigh the value of their rewards vs the food and med kit cost of keeping them alive; those who were not profitable were left to die. I did not understand some of the reward icons though; this game lacked a lot of user friendliness in that regard and could have really used an in game manual. I had enough money to buy all supplies in the few towns, but the buy/sell interface was not well made as it was very difficult to tell whether I was buying or selling. Good thing no money was lost from accidentally buying/selling, though I did sell all my food thinking I was buying it all.

The game had some great world building, but the story was not told well. I was left more confused at the end, wondering if I missed something, like if I got a bad ending. I do not feel inclined to find out about all the dialogue I missed. The replayability was poor; a rogue like pure survival horror mode without the train aspect would have worked extremely well.

5.8/10