The Final Station

Note: I played this game on PC, but as of this review, the review item tab only allows me to choose xbox one or ps4.

The Final Station is a 2d management/survival and exploration game, in which you play as a train conductor delivering people and cargo through a post apocalyptic world. The game itself is part management of your train part 2d survival and exploration through buildings and towns filled with zombies. Along the way you pick up survivors that you also have to manages to make sure they stay alive in a world that is dying.

The Final Station mixed two things surprisingly well, which is train management and the apocalypse. It reminded me of the movie 'Snowpiercer', except with zombies. But both movie and game do a good job on displaying that the world you live in is pretty gloomy, with the zombies being entirely black, and the colors used overall being dull. Also, the music and its placement was perfect for displaying how empty the world is, as for music isn't playing a lot, and for the most part, you are traversing the abandoned buildings in silence. What music that does play is rather quiet and a little sad, which felt perfect for the game's feeling. Another thing that I liked a lot was the gameplay. Going into buildings near train stops, some being pretty cool buildings, and shooting zombies was a lot fun. Even management of the train and the people on board was fun, as for something or someone was constantly needing attention on the train, the environments outside of the windows of the train was sometimes fun to look at, and the messages you get from other train conductors as they try to survive were fun to read.

Every game has negative aspects to it, and this game does have its fair share. The gameplay was fun, but was extremely repetitive too. Most missions involve you going into the area near a train station, going through a set of buildings, killing some zombies, finding a code to unlock the train barrier, then managing things and people on your train as you travel to go do the same thing over again. Only a couple of stations do things differently, but those missions are mostly you going into a town with survivors, buying supplies and upgrades for your guns, talking to someone important who decided to load something onto your train, then moving on to the next station. But the biggest problem I had with the game was its length. Now I usually don't consider the length of a game to be a negative, but this game short. Really short. I spent a lot of time searching through every room of every level, and I still completed the game in less than four hours. The reason why I think the length of the game is a diminishing factor is because it made the game feel like a flash game rather than a $15 game, and the length didn't really allow the game to expand. I didn't buy upgrades because I thought that I could buy them later on, and I think that only having 3 weapons in the game really showed how short your game is. On top of that, the map of the train stations shows that in the game, you only go to half of the stations. Not only did that throw me off on how long the game was, but it's also misleading on how much content is truly in the game.

The Verdict: When this game was announced, I was excited to see what this game can do. Sadly, the game was too short to have any potential. Despite the levels being repetitive, I didn't feel that the game was monotonous, but that is because the game was too short to feel annoyed by the sameness of the levels. Even though the gameplay was fun and the music(or lack there of) was great, I can't say that I recommend this game at $15.