Sony’s Japan Studios latest Playstation Network game to U.S. shores is the quirky The Last Guy. A simple yet complex game that’s tons of fun to play. The story behind the game is simple, a mysterious ray hits earth turning everyone outside into various forms of zombies, leaving everyone who was indoors safe. You play as a zombie from the Himalayan Mountains that is affectionate towards humans who’s been tasked by the United Rescue Force to rescue the stranded humans. This sets up the basic gameplay.
Spanning the planet, The Last Guy transports players to real locales such as Newcastle, San Francisco, Tokyo, Washington DC, Sydney and lots more for a total of 15 infested cities. The United Rescue Force has set up various Escape Zone where the unaffected will be rescued after by a URF carrier. In order to rescue the citizens you must traverse the city street gathering everyone while avoiding the various zombies that are walking around each city. Sounds simple enough, but it’s far from easy.
Each city has it’s own unique challenges, but they all share a common theme of finding a certain number of people to rescue within a specific amount of time. Different cities require different amounts of people that need to be found within differing time periods. The game is played through a top-down perspective resembling Google Maps. Each map features buildings, roads, train tracks, and everything else you’d find in a city. While wandering around you’ll start running into people that will join you as you try to bring them back to the Escape Zone. You can have 1 to 1000 people following you, depending on how you decide to play.
Getting everyone to safety can prove to be difficult and require a great deal of strategy. The city you’re dropped into as limits as to where you can roam so it proves for a challenge when trying to avoide the various zombies. Along the way there are various abilities which help you, from power ups to the ability to stop the zombies in their tracks for a limited time and also the power of invisibility. You can also use the different vision modes within the game with the thermal ability that allows you to see how many people are in the various buildings. While it’s a nice advantage to have, you loose the ability to see where the zombies are on the map so beware.
The great thing about The Last Guy is how it employes the use of strategy. Every city has a different lay out and escape zone, where you’re going to have to use differing methods when rescuing the people in need. There’s a good level of difficulty so getting through the game will be a challenge, but one that shouldn’t take more than a casual weekend. Still though, there is a lot to come back for added play through after all the levels are done. So there is a replay value, plus the ability for downloadable content to be added through new maps if they choose.
Another thing that really stood out to me was the games soundtrack, while it’s the same song for every level the techno beat is something that keeps you going and gets stuck in your head… in a good way. One disappointing thing I found was that there are no Trophies within the game. It’s a shame that Sony couldn’t even include Trophies into one of their own games. Having said that, there are no other complaints against the game. The Last Guy is a really fun game. Don’t be fooled by its simple look, it’s so much more and deserves at least a demo download from you.