Every year I have to sucker myself into getting hyped for something heavily story-focused because there's just something about telling primarily cinematic stories through the medium of video games has always been alluring to me, going all the way back to 2002's The Getaway, an undeniably flawed game that still captures my imagination decades later.
Last Stop shouldn't have been that game this year, except for the nagging thought that this was made by the same development team that made Virgina, a 2016 release that promised Lynchian thrills married the sort of inventive art styles that always feel exciting to wander around in...only to come out the pot completely on fire. It felt like experiencing a student film in game form, so assured it was in its profundity only to swing and miss on just about every element.
Last Stop, I'm happy to report, is not that same level of highway pile up. It's got...decent writing, I suppose, some gameplay elements that feel like gameplay elements and a series of tropes mashed into an anthology that at least promises if you aren't feeling one storyline, another is just around the corner.
Funnily enough, the one thing that Virginia had going for - a striking, highly individual aesthetic - is Last Stop's greatest flaw. Removed from the heavily stylized art style and camera work, Variable State's animation work is shockingly shoddy and its framing of scenes disarmingly maudlin. Last Stop is never a thing you're happy to look at, a striking problem for any visual medium. Mediocre voice acting and writing paired with completely unbelievable human subjects who move like animatronics sucks, plain and simple, and that vibe never feels like an intention so much as lack of talent.
I got through the third act and realized I just wasn't interested enough to see this through. For what it's worth, each character's arc in each act is a crisp 30-50 minutes, so if you check out some footage of this game and aren't as off put by its look and feel as I was you can take solace in the fact that it's essentially a 15 episode TV show which makes it very easy to cut up into little bites, or binge if you're into that sort of thing.
Last Stop shouldn't have been that game this year, except for the nagging thought that this was made by the same development team that made Virgina, a 2016 release that promised Lynchian thrills married the sort of inventive art styles that always feel exciting to wander around in...only to come out the pot completely on fire. It felt like experiencing a student film in game form, so assured it was in its profundity only to swing and miss on just about every element.
Last Stop, I'm happy to report, is not that same level of highway pile up. It's got...decent writing, I suppose, some gameplay elements that feel like gameplay elements and a series of tropes mashed into an anthology that at least promises if you aren't feeling one storyline, another is just around the corner.
Funnily enough, the one thing that Virginia had going for - a striking, highly individual aesthetic - is Last Stop's greatest flaw. Removed from the heavily stylized art style and camera work, Variable State's animation work is shockingly shoddy and its framing of scenes disarmingly maudlin. Last Stop is never a thing you're happy to look at, a striking problem for any visual medium. Mediocre voice acting and writing paired with completely unbelievable human subjects who move like animatronics sucks, plain and simple, and that vibe never feels like an intention so much as lack of talent.
I got through the third act and realized I just wasn't interested enough to see this through. For what it's worth, each character's arc in each act is a crisp 30-50 minutes, so if you check out some footage of this game and aren't as off put by its look and feel as I was you can take solace in the fact that it's essentially a 15 episode TV show which makes it very easy to cut up into little bites, or binge if you're into that sort of thing.