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amazon The Last Stand Aftermath reviews
If you’ve ever played games on Adobe Flash sites like Newgrounds, then The Last Stand is probably not a strange name.
Developed by Con Artist Games, The Last Stand is a zombie survival game franchise set in a post-apocalyptic world. Started in 2007, and so far the franchise has 5 titles.
Their latest work is The Last Stand: Aftermath, which was released on November 16.
What makes this version remarkable is that this game is not a browser game, but a game that downloads to your device, more specifically PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Will The Last Stand: Aftermath succeed? And more than that, will this game find its place when the current game market is saturated by zombie survival games?
The Last Stand: Aftermath is set 15 years after the events of The Last Stand: Union City. Much of the world’s population has been wiped out by a zombie apocalypse, and a base called “The End” is Union City’s last bastion of hope.
To ensure safety, the people of the complex have agreed, that anyone infected or exposed to the zombie virus will sacrifice their lives to go out exploring, finding supplies for everyone.
And maybe, with luck, there will be hope for humanity’s survival.
Usually, with zombie games, players will be able to create their main character or role-play a character with a traumatic past. After all, this is what previous The Last Stand games did.
The Last Stand: Aftermath does not do this, instead, the game will randomly select characters for us to control.
Why does the game do that? That’s because the game has applied the Roguelike element to the pure survival horror genre.
Starting from the base called “The End”, players will climb into the car, and explore the residential areas on the route to the border of the city.
At each stop, players will confront hordes of zombies while searching for anything useful such as fuel for vehicles, weapons, ammunition, food, drink, medicine, etc.
But the most important in the player’s journey are “supply” and “knowledge”. Why is it important? The writer will explain later.
When our character dies, the game will take us back to The End base to start with another character.
Fortunately, we also don’t have to start from scratch. The reason is that The End will send someone to the place where we die to bring back the car, along with the “knowledge” and “supplies”.
The reason the writer emphasizes them above is that knowledge and supplies are two currency units of the game.
Knowledge will be used to upgrade skills related to combat, exploring the surrounding area, and many other important factors. Meanwhile, supplies can be used to buy more equipment at the beginning of each turn.
Both of these factors make survival easier, ensuring that each of our turns is further and further away than before.
In works related to the zombie epidemic, when a character is infected, they become a burden on the community.
The Last Stand: Aftermath does not go this way, instead, the game will put us in the role of unfortunate people infected and we will try to serve the community as much as we can within a limited lifetime.
This time is not calculated by the clock, but by the character’s health bar. Starting with a value of 100, the character’s health will be gradually lowered as the virus spreads throughout the body.
The process of spreading happens even faster when attacked by zombies. The more infected, the weaker the player’s health.
However, the process of spreading is not a completely negative thing, that is because the more infected, the character’s body will have mutations, enhancing the ability to fight or sneak.
On the other hand, the player can also try to maintain the length of the health bar by using anti-virus potions found while exploring or using upgrades to slow the spread.
And like that, The Last Stand: Aftermath gave players a brainstorming puzzle. Trying to stay healthy for as long as possible, or accept the spread of the virus throughout the body to gain special abilities (and die faster)?
where can you get a The Last Stand Aftermath online
The Last Stand – Aftermath – PlayStation 5: Buy it now
The Last Stand – Aftermath – Xbox Series X: Buy it now
The Last Stand – Aftermath – PlayStation 4: Buy it now
Besides the two big factors above, The Last Stand: Aftermath also has many attractive points.
The battle array is done quite well, with sound effects as well as character movements that help convey the feeling of “force” very well to the player.
Weapon systems, including long-range (guns) and close-range (anything that can be picked up to fight zombies), are diverse.
If lucky, players can find items to upgrade weapons such as extended ammunition boxes, laser lights, and recoil barrels.
In case the gun runs out of ammo and the melee weapon fails, fists are also an option. The game also has a skill system to support this.
Besides face-to-face combat, the game also allows us to sneak by learning related skills, using appropriate upgrades, and using items of rubble, and glass bottles to distract.
The game also has a crafting system with a relatively diverse number of recipes. Players can craft medicine from herbs found along the way, silencers from plastic bottles and duct tape, medical boxes from bandages and alcohol, and many more…
No game is perfect, and The Last Stand: Aftermath is of course no exception.
The first problem, it’s in the top-down diagonal camera angle. This camera angle is relatively enough to give the player a clear view of the surroundings, however, it is quite annoying when the player enters a hidden corner.
The game will indeed let us see through obstacles when in that case, but the player’s vision is still limited.
If the game allows us to change the camera angle in four directions, east, west, south, and north, the discovery process will be much more pleasant.
The game’s anti-aliasing function is also not well done. Although not the type of gamer that puts a lot of emphasis on graphics, the writer still feels strange when he has adjusted all the elements to the maximum, but the image is still not clear.
The locations where players stop are also often repeated, especially when we play continuously for many hours. Although the game tried to make the route different each time, the slightly limited number of locations still made the repetition inevitable.
When a character dies, the game also has no explanation for why what this character has collected disappears completely.
Not only that, when finding the right place where the previous character died, the body (with a backpack containing an important inventory) is no longer there.
This shortcoming can be overcome if the game says that outside The End base area, there are still groups of people trying to survive and they will pick up whatever the player leaves behind.
Even better if we meet other people while exploring. They can treat players violently or peacefully, depending on the circumstances.