The Final Station Review

The Final Station opens with a little intro sequence set in the dilapidated ruins of a city. You move through the buildings, looking for… who knows what. Everything seems abandoned and lonely, and there is little for you to do except keep moving forward in hopes of deducing what has gone wrong here. After a short time, you inevitably meet your death by a horde of black humanoids.

Then the game truly starts. Your character awakens on a nice, sunny morning. Leaving home, you chat with people along the way, learning little bits about the world you live in. The game is set in a slightly futuristic world that seems to have been wracked by some sort of event dubbed the ‘first visitation.’ Soon enough, after plenty of foreboding, the ‘second visitation’ takes place. There isn’t much information given about what exactly this entails, but predictably, it’s very bad.

You play as a train engineer, which may not sound very exciting, but don't worry, it isn't as boring as it seems. Any time you’re on your train, there is a system malfunctioning, requiring you to perform maintenance through the press a button or the click of an arrow to keep the train running. You also have to manage your passengers’ hunger and health, handing out medical supplies and food whenever it’s needed. This admittedly isn't fun enough to make up an entire game in itself, but thankfully the majority of the game is spent outside of your train.

At every station in your train’s path, you’re forced to stop and disembark in order to find the access code from each station manager, thereby allowing you to continue on your track. Unfortunately, things just don't ever seem to go your way. After roughly twenty minutes of operating your train normally, you find that the military has occupied one of your stops and that the citizens in the area have been overtaken by some terrible sickness. You’re then given a mission to deliver an important piece of cargo somewhere to the south, kicking off the game proper.

Through a myriad of events, instead of hopping out of your train for a moment, getting the code from the manager, then continuing on your way as is intended, it’s rarely quite so easy. At each station, you’re tasked with finding the code somewhere out in the surrounding area, and this makes up most of the game. The places you walk through are often completely without life, inhabited solely by the dark monsters that are lurking throughout various rooms. All of the buildings in the areas you visit begin with rooms blacked out, only revealed once you open the door and look inside. The constant risks you take in exploration can yield supplies such as money and bullets, but can also give you bits and pieces of story told through notes and messages that have been left behind.

The feeling of risk runs out quickly, though, as dying sends you back to one of the many checkpoints in the area, ensuring you never lose much progress. This safety net takes the danger out of much of the exploring, leading me to take a lot of risks that I wouldn't have taken had there been some sort of penalty associated with dying, rather than losing a minute or two of progress.

There are a few different types of enemies thrown at you over the course of a four or five hour playthrough. There are the slow, shambling regular enemies, the faster and smaller monsters, an explosive variant, and a few more to keep combat interesting. Alone, any one of these types doesn’t pose a serious threat. But together, different types of enemies can become quite a nuisance.

To fight these people who have been seemingly mutated by some sickness, you have a shotgun, a rifle, a pistol, and your fists. Your main weapons will be the latter two, though, as ammo for the other two guns is scarce. There are objects in the environment such as chairs and toilets that can be thrown as a powerful one-hit kill, but oftentimes I was in too much of a panic to notice them until I’d killed whatever had assaulted me.

Throughout your journey you come across a plethora of people, abandoned and alone. Many will join you ass passengers, requiring passage to a safe zone. If you can get them to their destinations safely, you’re given money to spend on more supplies. Moreover, people you save will talk with each other during your train rides, giving you more pieces of the engaging story.

The game doesn't feature much in the way of a soundtrack, with almost all of the noises resulting from the creaks of doors opening, the chugging of your train along the rails, or the firing of shots from your gun. This lack of music, along with a pixelated art style that uses plenty of grays and blacks, help create a very bleak atmosphere.

There is plenty of diversity in the areas you travel. On foot, you move through abandoned town, underground bunkers, and research facilities, among plenty of other interesting locales. While on the train the background shifts to show your movement through the country, taking you past abandoned cities, forests, and battlefields. Despite the constrained color palette used, I never became bored of the scenery.