“Wow, look at you, Jamie Oliver” and “Doesn’t your willy get pinched?” or something like that. I enjoy those lines. This is one of those cases where I am going to, of sorts, berate the entertainment industry for embracing American references almost exclusively. I said it when reviewing and generally talking about Watch Dogs: Legion, there are just little things that make that game feel homely to me. The beeping for the blind at traffic lights is one example. New Yorkers and “Angeliens” have seen their towns invaded, homes of conspiracy, and everything else in games, but not too often do we see the UK in games.

Variable State, the developer behind 2016’s Virginia and Annapurna Interactive’s latest game, Last Stop, is very much set in the UK. Their previous game was set up in the cross-section of Twin-Peaks and The X-Files and put you in the heart of a mystery you were investigating in Virginia. The performance was rather shoddy, so I think it is understandable that I didn’t push through on that one. Nevertheless, I was far more excited about Last Stop after it was shown a few months back at an Xbox indie showcase.

See, the first thing I want to say is that it is a bit like a David Cage game. However, given my previous derision of those, it might come off as an insult. That’s not the intention. I mean, I actually like some characters, and I even like a child in this game for being sarcastic about Jamie Oliver and a man’s willy being pinched in sports clothes. Ok, there are similarities in timed dialogue options, button prompts that can be awkward, and generally the idea of it being less of a game and more an “interactive movie.” However, unlike Cage and his pretentious prattle, Last Stop seems to be doing something that is at least a little engaging.

That doesn’t stop it from having issues, of course. I’ve held for a while that a good game is written like a TV show, with each mission being an episode or even chapters of specific characters playing out as their own episodes. This doesn’t mean that Remedy’s idea to give Quantum Break recaps between every chapter should always be replicated. Especially when The Witcher 3 did the recap thing much better by putting it in the annoyingly long load times. Not that Last Stop needs the recaps.

Each chapter is hardly long enough to bother the length limit of a Tik Tok. Hardly breaking the back of anyone with an attention span so short they can’t focus on a 15-minute run through London setting up a handful of characters. Not that the recaps are all that long either, they just seem unnecessary even at their admittedly short runtime. If I was playing on something portable, something I could pull out and play for 10-minutes before putting it down for a few days, then I’d be more accepting of the recap. At a PC, I’m just wondering why it is that I need a recap, especially when I’m going to sit here blasting through chapter after chapter.

The writing itself might not be outstanding, but it certainly does make everyone I’m controlling feel moderately human. That’s at least one point over Cage’s twaddle. With a bit sci-fi and a bit mystery, there is always going to be some pedant saying X isn’t believable at all (I do it to Doctor Who a bit) but I don’t think that’s the point. I’d argue you aren’t being whacked with the melodrama hammer every two minutes (Cage’s favorite tool) but you aren’t always with well-reasoned characters either.

There was this one chapter early on, where I was trying to take a picture of a man with green glowing eyes. Well, calamity ensued when I was asked to hold: LB, RT, Y, LT, X, and then RB, or something like that. Anyway, Donna fell, made a noise, had to run, and as you do in your school uniform, you get chased by an alien Black man in his underpants after he’s been swimming in a disused swimming pool. I won’t spoil what happens, but I will say, some of it does seem a bit stupid. “What’s your point?” as I assume you are asking.

Not everything is melodrama or great comedy moments, the latter of which I am looking sternly at the animators for John and Jack’s second chat at John’s house. However, there is a bit in the Domestic Affairs plotline, one of the three main character’s plotlines, that is interesting. She’s a secret agent of a mysterious spy-like organization, but she’s not just leading a double life professionally. All the same, the moments with Emma and Donna are a little… contrived in terms of conflict, but I’m not entirely bored of Last Stop because of that. Even if it is something that you roll your eyes at and try to get through as quickly as possible.

I think the problem comes with the aforementioned Cage-y-ness of the whole idea, not in the story, but how it plays. Everything is more or less contextual, from simply walking all the way to Meena’s super-spy vision whenever she has her narc on. For the life of me, there was this one point where I was confronting a drug dealer named Spider. He pulled a knife, she went into Terminator vision to analyze him, and the analysis was measuring something. Nothing really explained that, it was just something that happened and was ignored afterward.

This is just one character, mind you. With John and Jack, the mechanic was repeated segments about tapping RB and LB to keep their heart rate reasonable when running. Of course, that ties into the heart attack story. That’s all fine and dandy, but you have to wait until the game tells you to press the buttons, otherwise, there is no point. Making tea? You have to contextually move the left and right analog sticks in what seems very precise directions.

My point is, outside of the dialogue options, which a few times have been curtailed to the same option three times, the game lurches to a halt until you join in. The thing is, it will do this with walking scenes too without warning. It will switch from automatic control to “I am going to stand here until you press forward.” There isn’t really a need for it either, unless you want to feel involved by rubbing up against invisible walls placed all around London. No exploration, just “get to the story, already!” That, as it always does, takes the word pacing out back and shoots it in the face.

Some awkward writing, such as, “and how does that make you feel?” aside, there is something about Last Stop that is fun and enjoyable. Playing as Jack during chapter 3, telling the game development studio boss to take his Greg Wallace head and crunch periods and shove them up his hole was enjoyable. Discovering more about Meena’s private life is interesting. The way we were going when I had a Black alien man chasing Donna in his underpants, that was going somewhere until we knocked that on the head, metaphorically.

The thing is, judging it as a game is hard. It is more akin to a movie that stops every now and then for you to press the play button on your remote. The thing is, if you were to ask a film critic to give their thoughts on it, they’d moan about the pacing, the length (unless they like Zack Snyder), and the sometimes jarring way characters snapped into place in a few scenes. When you look at the game bits, they all feel like they are there begrudgingly. There was a rhythm game section which was only used once. In terms of gameplay segments, everything would be used once: cleaning up books, making tea, breaking out of restraints. In fact, I tell a lie, I ate cereal and drank coffee as two different men, so I used that mechanic twice. Revolutionary!

Look, for all the gripes, I was happy when Vape Lord sent me to the other end of the universe to the planet of the dead. Sure, it wasn’t the best, most original, or all that interesting at times. However, I think it is exactly what David Cage wishes he was putting out from time to time, a weird bit of sci-fi that borrows from every film and TV show it can think of. At times it tried too hard to be heartwarming, and at times it let Molly be the heart of the entire thing. Sometimes it was a wannabe film that was unnecessarily long, yet at the same time, as a game it was quite short and lacking in anything particularly involving.

A PC review copy of Last Stop was provided by Annapurna Interactive for this review.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

Last Stop

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Enjoyable characters to be around.
• Inviting art direction.
• Solid performance.

Cons

• Gameplay mechanics are picked up and dropped as quickly.
• Some questionable writing.