Xbox Reviews

The Final Station Review

Review The Final Station | A 2D platform game with pretty unique gameplay, forcing you to take care for survivors and searching the world for some needed supplies, while riding one of the last trains on Earth. With hordes of zombies that take over cities, sounds interesting right? Let’s find out in this review!

THE GOOD

  • Without an explanation you are dropped into the game, with no idea what is happening. You don’t even know that you are going to encounter zombies. Why is this a positive thing, you might ask? Story-telling comes from written notes found in the world, train passengers and the world environments, building a big mysterious cataclysmic story that many gamers will like.
  • The Final Station features some beautiful pixel graphics that reminded me from another TinyBuild’s published game, Party Hard. This new game feels and looks even better though, especially the zombies are really scary with their big white eyes.
  • The gameplay mix between keeping survivors alive and yourself, resources management and exploring totally works.
  • You can take the “survival” horror game part very seriously. Exploring the different train stations can and will result in deaths. You never know what to expect behind a closed-door or sewer, giving you a very anxious feeling. You don’t have many medkits available, you have to keep your passengers alive with the same medkits, so frequently you start opening doors while on low health. Overall, this gameplay part is what makes The Final Station great.

Mixed Feelings

  • Final Station is split into two big gameplay parts, first is exploring the game world and the second part is managing the train and traveling to another station. You already saw that I’m a big fan for exploring the world but I can’t say the same for the train parts. The idea is clever but the execution lacks some fun. Keeping your passengers alive with food and medkits is the only real fun part, frustrating too if you don’t have enough supplies. Besides taking care for your passengers you need to switch levers or keep parts of your train cool so it doesn’t break. Gameplay-wise this means running all over the place pressing A and that’s it. I wish the developer had some other, more fun ways of fixing the train.

THE BAD

  • While managing the train portions, your passengers talk to each other. Sadly I misses 60-70% of what they were saying, I always needed to keep the train going, pulling levers or smashing the A-button. I’m not really sure why the developer didn’t see this issue before, for players it’s a big shame that they miss out on story related backgrounds.
  • I had a few issues using the (light) crafting system for making medkits or bullets. The idea behind it is fun but the screen was very confusing for me, the cursor on-screen was hard to see and I frequently didn’t know what i was making or what I was pressing. With limited time it was very annoying to unwillingly close the crafting screen, etc..

Score: 77% | The Final Station has many things going on at the same time, and not all of them are successful. The overall experience is a fun one though and I can easily recommend getting this game, just make sure to be spare with bullets and medkits!

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