The Last Guy
Top down arcade action that personifies what can be accomplished via download
Tags: PlayStation Network Categories: PS3 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Nov 10th, 2008
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| PlayStation Network (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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While some might see The Last Guy as a variation on Pac Man, I instead find the game more aligned with Robotron. With Robotron players were in an area, surrounded by hostile robots attempting to navigate the field and pick up or rescue humans. In The Last Guy players are tasked with going into real world locations and picking up hundreds of human survivors while avoiding the various zombies that roam the streets.
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The premise behind The Last Guy is, let’s face it, a little weird, A mysterious purple ray hits Earth, and everybody that was outside has turned into some form of monster, while those inside buildings were unaffected. Players are the one man rescue squad, traveling around, picking up human and carting them to safety while avoiding the zombies.
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Instead of constantly being on the move, players will at times have to simply stand in the middle of the street waiting for a building to empty of its human occupants. Sure there are some stragglers out and about, but the vast majority of people that need to be saved are inside buildings, and the player will need to wait for them to exit their buildings and attach to the player and the mass of survivors on the way to the Escape Zone.
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Each level is based on a real world location, apparently based on Google Maps satellite image. This is a very cool touch. Players will need to go around the city and coax the human survivors out of their buildings and escort them back to a predetermined safety area where they will be picked up when time runs out – the Escape Zone. Cities such as Washington D.C., Tokyo, Berlin, London and plenty of others are represented here, and the use of the Google Maps image simply helps to draw the player in.
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In Robotron players had a gun to fire, in The Last Guy players instead have a few power-ups that can be found on the playing field. These can’t be stored for later used, so some coordination and planning is necessary. Not every level has these power-ups available either. One level may have a number of ones that restore the energy meter which is used for sprinting to make the player go a little faster for a limited time, while other levels feature greater numbers of the invisibility power-up or the one that stops all zombie activity – both for a limited time of course.
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The Last Guy has a variety of zombies each posing a different kind of threat. Some simply lumber about attempting to eat the humans, others spew a clod around the city occluding vision, while others simply stand guard in front of an area that the player would most likely really like to get to. It is in the later stages where the number and variety of the zombies appear in a given stage that the difficulty really begins to ramp up.
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Seemingly a shallow arcade style game, The Last Guy is actually a very well crafted title. The levels each have a high level of replayability because there are various things to find, such as V.I.P. humans to escort back, or simply trying to find the optimal way through a level to get more humans back to the Escape Zone. While the game isn’t worth buying at retail, this is perfect for Sony’s download service, and the asking price ($10) is just right. The Last Guy is a great example of what The PlayStation Network has to offer – a fun title at a decent price.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Frantic action without weapons + Depth and strategy + High replay value |
8.6 |
| What Doesn't | |
| - No co-op/multiplayer | |
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Addictive and fun, The Last Guy is well worth the price for those into some arcade stayle action. | |
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Tags: PlayStation Network
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Nov 10th, 2008 and is filed under PS3 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
