The Last Guy review (PS3)

Intrigued by the sparse details of the initial announcement, and amused by the crazy fake PR video for the development team I considered the game certainly worth a go. The Last Guy essentially takes satellite photos of parts of various global cities, throws a few monstrous and slightly comical zombie creatures around them and challenges you with rescuing a certain number of survivors in a specified period of time. The story basically concerns a strange purple light that shines down on earth, turning everyone exposed into hideous creatures, so by running around the overhead streets you’ll encourage survivors that were indoors during the event to emerge and follow you around in some kind of weird Snake/Pacman hybrid.

If a zombie touches you, it’s game over, or if it breaks your line of survivors those that are on the wrong side of the zombie leg it into the closest building to be saved again, though reaching a designated escape zone will deposit your followers to safety. It’s a simple premise made interesting by the locations and monsters that you will encounter. Then there’s the power ups you may be lucky enough to collect along the way. Some warp you to the nearest escape zone, whereas some boost your stamina or make you invisible to the zombies.

Yes, you can sprint!

Your ever growing stamina bar (as you increase your line of followers) can be expended by sprinting across an area, quickening those you are rescuing and you can also blow your whistle which makes them all run faster and bunch up towards you. Useful if an oncoming enemy is about to break your chain. Then there are four VIPs placed around each environment (usually in hard to reach areas; blockades that can only be broken by having a certain number of followers) which give you a score bonus and not a lot more.

You can go back to any of the 15 standard levels at any time once completed to try and find the remaining VIPs, and again, while it doesn’t achieve anything specific other than letting you read a line of text about why they are important, it does slightly incentivise replaying levels beyond the simple star rating system, grading you on your final score. Thankfully however, the score does make a small difference, reaching the maximum star rating on all of the stages in each of the four levels unlocks more stages for you to play with. Well, I assume it’s on each of them. I’ve only managed on the first four stages so far, and that almost involved tearing my hair out. Plenty to keep you coming back.

Zombie types

You can zoom in and out on your current viewpoint to get a better idea of where zombies are, and with a tap of X you’ll get an infra red view of the city which points out where the majority of survivors are bunched but hides (most of) the cold dead zombies from view. Indeed, one type of zombie can occasionally camouflage themselves on their regular patrol patterns, making switching between the view modes even more important. Each level introduces a new type from the first new entry, a fast moving creature that sticks to its path to some more freaky and unpredictable scorpion zombies. A couple of semi boss stages add some variety to your objectives and are both challenging and much fun, so there’s plenty to do on your path to rescuing everyone else.

If you’re finding it too challenging, sometimes dying and retrying a level will set up a different collection of power ups around the map that may make it easier, and I’m sure the odd monster was removed when I was really struggling. Many of the levels seemed like a last minute success story which is nothing if not satisfying, and while replaying the levels to boost my recorded score made it much easier, the variety of strategies to beat each level is truly commendable for what looks like such a simple game.

Fireworks

There is plenty of strategy to such a simple game. Certainly you’ll have the standard collect as many people as possible without risking it being broken theme in each level, but the positioning of the escape zones and the bulk of survivors makes a new city require different tactics. Sometimes you’ll need to attract an enemy to clear another path, or even use enemies in other ways (working it out for yourself is half the fun; even if it’s kind of obvious).

Then there’s the option of how to collect survivors. If your line makes a circle around any survivors they are immediately added to your party, which means sometimes you’ll take the risk of circling a building to move on quicker, or just because those survivors are harder (or impossible) to get to otherwise. There is something about managing this and getting out of the way of enemies in time that always brings a smile to your face, and it’s not just the sparkly firework-esque announcement that you’ve done it.

Don’t expect much of an ending

In a retro style, the music is very synthesized (and catchy), subtly borrowing from a couple of old arcade classics rather than playing up the horror most of the time. It all seems to add to the quirky atmosphere, including the generic survivors’ vocalisations in a dialect unrecognisable to this reviewer. Mirroring the text based introduction, the ending won’t satisfy you further than a personal accomplishment and without wanting to sound like a broken record, the game doesn’t support the trophy system (yet?)

Yet it’s a rewarding and refreshingly simple game, available for a fiver and providing more replayability than the previous release on the PSN, Ratchet & Clank, it’s difficult to feel short changed by something that provides the ambivalence of being happy that you’ve managed to overcome the crazy challenges while being upset at reaching that point. It feels like a classic grinder of a game to reach the high score, but brought closer to the modern visuals we all expect nowadays. Miss the golden age of retro? You’ll have a blast with The Last Guy, and while it’s easy enough for most people to get through if you’re dedicated enough, getting the top grade in any level is enough of a challenge to keep the hardcore working on it for days.