This game was an odd one. It had all the heart for a truly unnerving story, but it didn't have the polish or the execution to get it done. The animations go from stiff to goofy to clipping through each other, which took away any and all horror it had set up in the story. A story which feels both too fast AND too slow somehow.

It's a fascinating look into how some ideas are so good, but can only take the project so far into the actual execution of it all. I'd recommend it purely on the note that more people should see this weird mess of a game.

Last Stop is an “interactive film” type game set in London. It follows the daily lives of three characters – John, Meena and Donna – until they end up encountering some supernatural elements. On a chapter-by-chapter basis, you can choose which order to play them in, but must play through all three before you can start the next chapter as anyone.

John Smith is a middle-aged single dad, looking after his daughter Molly. An incident with a stranger causes him and his neighbor – a mid-20s game designer called Jack – to switch bodies. They try to act as each other with some really fun heist-style segments (with John’s daughter, Molly, commenting on it and pointing out flaws), while also trying to figure out how to go back.

Meena is an agent for a mysterious agency, while at home she’s keeping an affair a secret. It takes a while for her story to pick up as she’s rather unlikable, and the best parts of her story are when she starts encountering the other characters fairly late on.

Donna is a high school student, who encounters a strange man with glowing eyes. Her friend knocks him out and, worried that he’ll go to the police, they tie him up and take turns watching him, who stays silent until it’s just him and Donna.

The gameplay of the game is quite simple, you walk around as each character, interacting with the small amount of things it allows you to (although sometimes even walking will be automated). You will get conversation options, but these just slightly alter the tone of the conversation and won’t affect the overall story, there’s no “wrong” option, you’ll end up in the same places no matter what. There are a few minigames, such as pressing musical notes or throwing bottles, which are a nice distraction but failing doesn’t change anything.

That said, the characters and dialogue are very engaging, especially in John and Jack’s segment, and the mystery will keep you wanting more until you get to the end. Unfortunately, the ending itself is a bit of a let down. The final section is very over the top, and then the game will give each character a choice on what they want to do.

Meena and Donna are pretty much given a “no good option” choice at the end, while’s John’s choice is to swap bodies or to keep his new one – a choice which comes out of nowhere as for the entire game he never gives it a moment’s notice, clearly being offended that someone would think he would be so low when other characters suggest it. I can think of a better choice John should have been given, but can’t go into details without spoilers.

That said, Last Stop is still worth a playthrough, for all the moments leading up to the ending, and especially the interactions between Jack, John and Molly.

This felt like a low-budget and roughly implemented Telltale/Quantic Dream game. The story is all over the place, the gameplay is mostly repetitive and dull, the characters are hit and miss, a bunch of the plot points feel really forced, and everything gets real weird in the final chapter. There are literally no meaningful choices outside of one final binary choice per main character that just picks between different ending scenes.

Variable State's previous game, Virginia, had barely enough gameplay to be called a video game (interactive film felt more appropriate to me personally) but Last Stop has swung way too far in the opposite direction. It's chock full of simple and boring QTEs and wonky walking sequences. Maybe their third game will find something in the Goldilocks zone.

All that being said, it does have a few interesting and genuinely funny moments. It's just a tough game to recommend overall.

Tres historias que terminan uniéndose gracias a su toque scifi. Una aventura gráfica del estilo Telltale o Life is Strange, que lo único que haces es caminar y decidir cada frase (y algún que otro minijuego, muy escasos).

Curiosamente, ninguna decisión importa, salvo la final, lo cual me parece bueno y malo a la vez. La verdad es que estaba un poco cansado de los juegos que estás pendiente todo el tiempo de lo que dices para no cagarla en la partida.

En cuanto a la trama en sí, me parece normalita, tienes sus luces y sus sombras.

-Spoiler Warning-

Although this game has an intriguing premise, it fails to deliver as a narrative-driven game, and I was left quite disappointed with how the story plays out.

Let's start with what I liked - the performances from the voice cast are pretty good. With a lot of different characters in the game I didn't feel like anybody stood out to me as sounding weird. And, like I said before, I like the premise of the game. You play as three characters with loosely connected storylines, and progress each one to find out how they are all connected. The game starts out great, and made me want to unravel the mystery at the end of it.

Unfortunately, that mystery is genuinely not good. Basically, each character gets a "good" and "bad" ending, but all of the endings are bad in some way. The characters get punished even when they don't deserve it. It's a very strange message, I'm not even sure WHAT message the team was going for. John is really the only one that gets an okay ending in his good ending, while Donna and Meena get shafted either way. And unfortunately, the game spends way too much time on these individual stories and not enough on the overarching one, so much so that you don't really have any interest in it.

I'm sure the message of the game is to cherish what you love in the moment, cause you'll never know when it's gonna be gone, and Donna's story is likely an allegory for trafficking/abuse, but MAN what a terrible way to execute these messages. Besides the actual story, the game is just ugly, and there's not much in the way of gameplay either. Your choices really don't matter at all, until the very last choice that decides your ending, and anytime there's a gameplay segment, it's clunky and just meant to be an achievement or pad out time.

The game starts out alright, but quickly plummets in quality as it continues, and eventually ends very unsatisfyingly. I would not recommend playing this game.