INTRO:
Every now and then, the indie scene would make a gem that is worth beholding. Most of the other times though, there is either just dross, or very rough stones. The Final Station is straddled in between these two mediocre outputs.
PREMISE:
The player character is Edward Jones (though his name can only be gleaned from the statements of other characters and documents). He appears to be a silent protagonist, but in actuality, the player cannot see or hear anything from him; other characters that he is conversing with can do so, though. Unfortunately, this will not be the only problem in the game’s story-telling.
Anyway, Edward is a train driver in a sci-fi future of sorts. The backdrop and other things that the player would see early on in the game would not suggest this, but the things that appear later would. That said, Edward has been recently assigned a work routine, which would turn out to be anything but routine.
Along the way, he would have to contend with the second coming of the apocalypse, while operating a train with rather unreliable systems, temperamental cargo and passengers who are at risk from the complications of the previous two.
The Final Station’s overall experience is about telling a story, but as mentioned already, there are problems with the story-telling. This includes typos in the English text. More problems will be described later.
GAMEPLAY – OVERVIEW:
There are two major parts in the gameplay: managing the train, its cargo and its passengers while it is travelling, and getting the means to continue travelling when the train has to stop. Despite the seeming intertwining, these two parts are almost wholly separate; this will be elaborated later.
SINGLE AUTO-SAVE:
For better or worse, every playthrough has only a single auto-save. The auto-save is updated at the start of any level, and only then. Thus, continuing a playthrough means playing that level from the start. (That said, scenarios while the train is travelling count as levels too.)
TRAIN OPERATION & PASSENGER HANDLING:
The levels involving the travelling train have relatively easy but tedious gameplay.
Firstly, there are the unreliable systems of the train. The train will also take on cargo, which also has its own unreliable system. One of them is always on the fritz; the player has to regularly correct the system by engaging in a simple mini-game. The controls for the mini-game are not completely documented, however; the later ones certainly are not.
Then, there are the passengers. For most of the game, there is at least one passenger, though there are often more. For whatever reason, the passengers suffer from heightened metabolism and rapid deterioration of their wounds; they get hungry quickly, and if they are wounded and/or starving, they lose health within moments. The player has to keep them fed by giving them food packages, and top off their health by giving them medical kits. It is a very simple process, and would have been passable if not for the other thing that happens during these scenarios.
The passengers talk whenever the player character is in the passenger car. They impart story-related things, like the events that happened before the story of the game and current on-goings that serve as foreshadowing of what the player would encounter next. However, having to worry about the failing systems on the train and its cargo and the well-being of the passengers means that the player would be missing out on a lot of conversations.
Most importantly, the countdown to the train’s arrival at the next destination happens independently of anything that is happening on the train. In order to conserve resources for the levels on the train, the player will want to disembark as soon as possible.
Thus, it is not easy to continue eavesdropping on the conversations between passengers. These moments in the game are where the gameplay designs damage the story-telling.
AWAY FROM TRAIN – OVERVIEW:
Only the driver of the train gets off it every time that it stops at a station. Meanwhile, everything on the train is frozen. The player can then focus on getting things from the current locale.
Scavenging for supplies, materials and saleable items will be a major part of the gameplay when the driver is away from the train. The main goal of each of these scenarios is to find the code that would release the train from the generator that is charging. Sometimes, there are other mandatory goals, such as getting the generator running or enabling the train to take on cargo.
CIVILIZED STOPS:
Some of the train stops occur at places that are inhabited by people, and have yet to fall to the oncoming darkness. Surviving passengers get off these stations, and will give payments to the driver. Most of the payments are money, but they also include supplies that they have been somehow hoarding somewhere.
These places also have the driver doing tasks and meeting people that would progress the main story. These are also where the driver can purchase food packages and upgrades for his guns. The player should not expect much complexity in this matter though; even the gun upgrades are rudimentary, e.g. extra magazine capacity.
HEALTH:
The player does not need to worry about the driver’s endurance or sustenance; there is something to explain this later. However, he can still die from injuries, though these will not impair his performance in any way until his health is completely depleted.
Somehow, he always has space somewhere on his person to carry all of the medical kits that the player has found. These are the same kits that have to be used on passengers with poor health, so the player will want to be sparing with their use.
AMMUNITION:
For whatever reason, the driver is trained in the use of firearms; there is no narrative explanation for this, other than the implications that people in his line of work are frequently requisitioned by the military.
That said, the train driver needs to have ammunition for the guns, of which there are only a few in the game. The handgun shares the same ammunition as the rifle (which is found much later), whereas the shotgun uses shells. The latter type of ammunition is rarer.
ON-BOARD WORKSHOP:
Peculiarly, the locomotive of the train has a workshop in which the driver can cobble together health kits and ammunition; food packages are the only things that cannot be put together there. Using the workshop is a simple matter, but the user interface is clunky and has to be used in real-time.
LOOTING:
If the things that the driver would loot are not ammunition, health kits or other consumables, then they are saleable items. Somehow, he can find some means of converting knick-knacks like a pair of glasses without an owner into cash. This part of the gameplay can seem quite silly.
FIGHTING – OVERVIEW:
Indubitably, the driver will have to fight his way through enemies that are in the way. He is always alone in this matter, so the player will have to be crafty about how to deal with the masses of formerly human things that are coming his way.
SHOOTING:
Firing his guns is of course the main means of attacking enemies at range. Fortunately, the developer has implemented decent mouse-based controls, so the driver will be shooting at wherever the player is directing the mouse cursor on.
However, there are still limits to where he can his guns at. He can only raise his guns 45 degrees below and above his shoulder level; he cannot aim at anything beyond those limits.
Headshots on the vaguely-humanoid enemies are the best means of knocking them out quickly. The catch here is that most enemies have their heads not on the same height as the driver’s shoulder level. In other words, headshots always have to be made at awkward angles and generally can only hit one target at a time; this will not be tactically viable if there are many enemies coming after the driver. Furthermore, gunshots that land generally cannot penetrate enemies.
There are barrels of explosives and certain enemies that explode when they are killed. However, without being able to penetrate ranks of enemies and hit these, the most damage that the player could inflict by exploiting these is to eliminate the front ranks of foes before they pass by the barrels.
Thus, the player should not expect guns to be able to handle incoming hordes of enemies.
PUNCHING:
The driver may not be able to do things like jump around at great heights with gusto, but he can deliver powerful punches that can eventually kill even the inhuman enemies.
At first glance, getting into close combat with the enemies seems like a very bad idea. Indeed, if the driver is mobbed, he dies within mere moments.
However, his punches can stall the movement animations of the enemies. Furthermore, the player can still move him slightly while he is doing his punching animation, so it is possible to have him back away from enemies while hurling punches.
Most importantly, his punches can hit multiple enemies at once. Knowing this and the above, it is possible for the player to repeatedly punch multiple enemies to death, especially if the player exploits a certain gap in the coding of enemy behaviour and animations; this exploit will be described later.
The driver can also “charge up” to deliver more powerful punches (which can break down weak walls, by the way). This would have been amusing, if it was more practical; the animation will slow down his movement tremendously, and he cannot hold the charge forever.
CLIMBING LADDERS AND STAIRCASES:
The driver will be climbing a lot of ladders and staircases. Indeed, these will be the main means of moving about vertically because the driver cannot jump much.
Ladder-climbing is an animation that takes a while to execute; during this time, the driver is vulnerable to being hit. Furthermore, while he is in the climbing animation, he cannot do anything else.
Staircases are represented in-game as a stack of rectangles of the same width. There are no animations for climbing stairs; the driver can move up and down them while punching and shooting.
There are no enemies that can use ladders and staircases; the latter, in particular, will be the player’s main means of thinning out the hordes through cheesy hit-and-run tactics.
ENEMIES:
The enemies in this game vastly outnumber the driver. Having space to retreat will be a major factor in most fights. Most enemies move at the same pace, though some of them move faster than the rest such that the player would have to focus on these while avoiding the rest.
All enemies have attack animations. These can be interrupted by attacking them, but there is a chance that they will ignore the interruption; thus, stun-locking enemies with punches is not a viable tactic.
There is not a lot of variety to the enemies in this game; their main source of threat is their numbers. There are also plenty of ambushes, usually foreshadowed by the presence of doors that the driver cannot use. Indeed, much later in the game, enemies tend to crash out of just about any unsecured door.
OBSTACLES:
Much of the game will involve dealing with obstacles that are in the way. Locked doors are the most common; finding keys, keycards, codes or other means of unlocking the doors is a common task, for better or worse. If it is not these, the task would involve powering up derelict systems, which unlock doors or otherwise remove obstacles anyway.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
This game has two sets of artwork. One is used for the background, which is of much higher definition. This is used to present what is happening in the backstory, namely what humanity’s collective efforts are being directed towards in order to face the impending apocalypse. Otherwise, the background is mostly static.
The other set of artwork is for things in the foreground, which matter to the gameplay. This artwork is much simpler and more pixelated. Fortunately, most things are recognizable for what they are, e.g. healing kits appear as the video-game usual that is white rectangles with red crosses on them. However, to a player that has played many other games with pixel artwork, they can seem unimpressive.
Most of the animations are exhibited by the driver and the inhuman enemies; even these are limited in variety. At least the particle effects from weapons-fire look quite good.
SOUND DESIGNS:
There are no legible voice-overs, even though speech bubbles linger a while. There is not much in the way of music either.
Thus, the most that the player would be listening to is the ambient noise, of which there is plenty. Most sounds oppressive, which is just as well because many places that the train would be going to has already been badly compromised and infested.
Other than these, there are the sound effects of gunfire and the punches. Both sound loud and heavy, perhaps even exaggerated because the gunfire is always the same loud reverberating thunder regardless of where it occurs.
SUMMARY:
Easily exploitable enemy behaviours, flawed story-telling methods and mediocre presentation mar the experience that The Final Station is trying to offer.