The Final Station Review – An Infected Train Ride

Developer: Do My Best Games

Publisher: tinyBuild Games

Price: $14.99

Available on: PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One

Zombie games are a dime a dozen coming in many different forms, from point and click adventures to third person shooters. They can range in quality from very good to uninspired, and with the sheer amount out there it can be difficult to tackle a new approach to the genre. Do My Best Games tries to do exactly that, giving us a side-scrolling shooter with a slightly different approach. In the game The Final Station, you play as an engineer guiding one of the few remaining trains from town to town following a zombie type apocalypse. Seems the Infected sprang up after an alien visitation, and work is underway on a device called The Guardian to help save humanity from a possible second visitation. It’s an interesting premise that gets bogged down in mediocre gameplay, twitchy controls, and for me, a game breaking bug.

Things start off simply enough: you wake in your home and report for work. Blockers have been placed on the tracks at each stop, and you’ll need a code to unlock them so you can move on. As you progress from station to station, the code becomes increasingly harder to find, especially once Infected have been put in your path to block your way. At first these Infected are easy to deal with, but soon other types appear, forcing you to use different tactics. You at least get a pistol to deal with these menaces, but ammo is in short supply. As things move along you’ll eventually get a shotgun (fun to use and possibly the best weapon in the game), and an automatic rifle. Melee attacks aren’t always effective, especially against a group, but with ammo in short supply and the Infected taking three to four shots to take down (unless you get good at head shots), you’ll need to resort to melee tactics on a regular basis. Chairs, boxes, and even broken toilets are placed about to use, but after one use they’re done. You need to make sure you have an escape route (the Infected can’t climb ladders) or plenty of space to retreat if you have a group to deal with. Death can come swiftly and often, as it only takes a couple of hits to kill you.

This would be fine if shooting were fun, but it’s not. Reloading is a bit slow, and being swarmed while doing so can lead to some cheap deaths. You’ll need to make sure your weapon is loaded and ready to go before opening a door or heading down through a manhole cover. Aiming is done with the left stick and can be very twitchy on the PS4 (from some footage I watched it looked like mouse and keyboard controls for the PC fared better). The game tells you absolutely nothing on how to do anything. There isn’t even an “Options” tab in the main menu to check controls. So you need to figure things out on your own, which can lead to some very frustrating moments. It’s also sometimes very difficult to see what you’re highlighting to press on, making things even more irritating. I found how to use first aid packs by accident (hit Triangle on the PS4), and crafting was a real chore. The game sometimes would not allow me to craft, even when I had an ample supply of parts to do so. This was most likely a glitch, as others who’ve played the game didn’t encounter such issues. Unfortunately, I did, and it wasn’t the only issue I encountered.

I also hit a weird glitch where hitting “Continue” in the main menu kept erasing my save data, forcing me to restart from the beginning. Uninstalling and reinstalling the game seemed to fix that issue, and even helped with the crafting. But then halfway through I hit a game ending bug that prevented my progression. The game wouldn’t allow me to go back down a ladder, or move through the room fully to the door. Restarting the level didn’t help either. Again the game was uninstalled, which was frustrating as I was starting to get into a good flow in the game.

However, that doesn’t mean I was enjoying the gameplay. The train rides between stations were tedious affairs, as you needed to run back and forth to adjust certain things to keep the train running (again, doing so was guess work, as the game tells you nothing). Passengers also needed attending to, in case they needed food or health kits. Getting passengers to safe towns netted you some nice cash, though there was really no place to actually use it, save a stand here and there that sold only one item. NPCs in the towns rarely had anything interesting to say, and the story never really gelled, even with reading scraps of paper or computer terminals for information. Each town just became about finding the code to unlock the blocker so you could move on. Exploration seemed forced, as locked doors and manhole covers herded you along a path. Occasionally you could opt for a different path, or simply not open doors to certain rooms (this was found more through trial and error), but overall exploration was less than satisfying. It is necessary evil though, especially if you’re low on ammo or medkits. But it never felt fun.

And that seemed to be The Final Station in a nutshell. The promising premise of guiding a train through a zombie infested landscape was intriguing enough, and the shadowy dealings of the military added a slight air of mystery. Some levels, especially late in the game, even managed a decently creepy atmosphere. But all of this was brought down by less than stellar gameplay, poor interface and control design, and game breaking bugs. It was very frustrating to try and muddle through to an ending that felt uninspired instead of shocking. Some may have some fun with this game, but I’d guess most will become frustrated and quit before the end credits roll. The Final Station could have been something unique to stand out in a crowded field of zombie games. Instead, technical issues and poor execution make it more tedious and a missed opportunity. This is one train ride you should miss.