Ctrl+Tab: The Last Stand 2

[The Cheezy One]

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The Last Stand 2

[a href='http://www.kongregate.com/games/ConArtists/the-last-stand-2']

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The Last Stand 2 is a zombie survival game for those who, like me, found Left 4 Dead too straight forward, and wanted a touch more control behind it.

At the end of The Last Stand, the protagonist was rescued by helicopter, only for one of the other survivors to have become infected. The infected attacked the pilots, causing the helicopter to crash. The opening cinematic has a very noir feel to it, with shaky still images, and pastel shade colours. The story passes through effective use of diary entries, continuing when you pass from city to city, in an attempt to reach Union City, and the evacuation point, before the military leave in 40 days. In fact, the entire story has the feel of a well-directed zombie flick, in particular 28 Days Later.

Gameplay is simple, almost formulaic. Zombies want your brains, but you're fairly attached to yours, so fend them off with a barricade, a pistol and harsh language. You collect supplies, weapons and traps, and search for survivors during daylight, when the zombies apparently have day jobs as trolley boys at Somerfield [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0-As-tDAXM]. The one difference between this and other survival games is its realistic design. It seems like the designers asked themselves, 'what would we do in a zombie apocalypse?', and the result was this. You can find survivors, who can be given your leftover guns to fight with, as well as helping you repair the barricade. To move to another town, you need supplies, which can be found by searching nearby buildings. The more supplies you have, the further you can move. Everything you do during the day takes time, however, and this needs to be rationed between searching and repairing the barricades. This gives the game a feeling of deep immersion.

However, the difficulty curve seems to be erratic, to say the least. Initially, you need to be constantly clicking to fend off the waves, and almost always lose a large amount of the barricade. However, later, when you have four survivors, the game becomes too easy, especially when you get automatic weapons. The infinite amount ammo slightly breaks the feel of survival, when you have no regard for the ammunition you are using. The inability to change weapons while reloading can also lead to problems later on.

Despite the faults, I can easily attest to this being one of the most immersive and atmospheric survival games you will find.

And one of the survivors looks like Chuck Norris. Awesome.

 

[Da_Vane]

Having played the original, the Last Stand 2 is a significant improvement and allows for more diversity in gameplay, but unfortunately most of the faults of the original are still present in this version too. Like the limitation that nobody can shoot sideways except the player, and even then, they have a somewhat limited angle of spread resulting in severe blind spots that can lead to extreme death by zombification. In both versions, it is possible through incompetent survivors that run away before the barricade is breached and the player's blind spots for zombies to break through the extreme edges of the barricade and then jink vertically (that is, they will move one step diagonally to the left and then immediately another diagonally to the right) completely immune from harm from the player because he can't turn and shoot them in the head as they approach.

The immersiveness of the searching is the most significant feature of the Last Stand 2. In the original, this wasn't anywhere near as fun, although a lot more simpler, as you didn't have to search for supplies, move between towns, or choose which buildings to loot. You simply allocated time. The survivors were also less complex, as they came with their own weapons and your excess armoury was wasted. It was a bit annoying that they were mostly useing pistols and revolvers, while you had Uzis, Shotguns, and AK47s going spare (I favoured the M4 myself).

All said and done, I must say that this is an extremely good review. I like this style, and hope to see more of it.