Game Review: Last Stop

 

Last Stop is the 2nd video game developed by UK based studio Variable State and published by   Annapurna Interactive. Variable State are most well known for their first-person mystery game Virginia, which was released in 2016.  The studio itself being based in the UK has more relevance towards Last Stop than you’d expect; as I think Last Stop may be the most British game I’ve ever played. That inherent style serves as a primary foundation for the game’s overall design.

Last Stop serves as an anthology of sorts. You play as three individual characters who each have their own lives to live within the city of London.  These three characters all have their own individual stories which play out over the course of six chapters. 

Paper Dolls is a story which follows John Smith, a middle-aged father who after a recent heart attack is living his life slow and careful. Across the road is Jack Smith, a young and self-absorbed video game programmer who is living his life fast and free. After a chance encounter at the local train station both John and Jack end up mysteriously swapping bodies. As they wake up to face this strange new reality, the duo must work together to live out each other’s lives to the best of their ability while finding a way to reverse the swap before it’s two late. 

Domestic Affairs is a story centred around a government intelligence agent called Meena Hughes. Meena isa ruthlessly ambitious person who is clearly out to get herself picked for a key project the agency is recruiting for. Outside her job we see Meena’s work life has fractured the relationship she has with her immediate family; having taken up an affair with a doctor behind her husbands back. As her story progresses, we see the extent Meena goes in order to try maintain her struggling relationships while trying to be successful in her work. 

Stranger Danger is a story that plays out through the perspective of Donna Adeleke; a teenage school girl who along with her friends Vivek and Becky get caught up in an incident which has them taking a mysterious man hostage. As time goes by Donna learns this man is way more than he seems and has supernatural abilities. The man uses these abilities to manipulate Donna to his own nefarious means as she struggles to maintain a grasp on her family and friends around her. 

These three stories all have a varying level of quality behind them. The weakest story for me was easily Domestic Affairs due to its slow pace and Meena’s negative nature. I just can’t get behind a protagonist who is so inherently terrible in their actions and personality. Her chapters do have a underlying mystery but it’s hard to appreciate them when Meena is just such hard character to get behind. Stranger Danger starts off slow and tedious but I think it flourishes into a really interesting story when the true nature of Donna’s hostage comes to light. Paper Dolls is easily my favourite story out of the three just for its charming and witty premise which is capable of being surprisingly poignant at times. The overarching plot that ties all of these stories together while interesting sadly feels too underdeveloped and comes in too late to be received as anything more than a rushed ending. I think on reflection this premise may have worked more if the game had chosen to focus on one of the stories as it’s main narrative rather than trying to juggle all three of them together. 

Where the game wins a lot of points for me though is in its visual and audio design. It truly is a game which feels distinctly British in nearly every way it can possibly be. I know this may be a bit of bias considering I am British myself but It’s really nice to see a game capture Britain in such an accurate fashion. Everything from the world design to the menu interface is built up of aspects of British culture and industry to a truly accurate degree. The cell-shaded art-style helps to reflect the London setting in a bright and colourful perspective too. I love the soundtrack behind the game too. The composer Lyndon Holland really captures a delightful sense of charm in the tracks for this game and they accompany the game’s sombre, idyllic moments really well.  

I think where the game’s biggest trip up is reflected however is in it’s gameplay or lack thereof.  I understand these games have this notable limitation in struggling to push gameplay within the confines of a narrative driven landscape but I don’t think that’s an excuse to not even try. The problem I have with Last Stop is it literally asks the bare minimum of you as the player. Menial dialogue options are presented to you during certain scenes, but these options do not influence the scenes in any notable way which I think is a major missed opportunity. Why should I as the player care what I say if I know it’s not going to have any notable impact? Besides the uninspired dialogue options there’s also a very inconsistent level of gameplay interaction littered across the story which again ask the bare minimum of you before proceeding on to playing the next scene. This game doesn’t play like a game, it plays like a Netflix interactive experience and even then, those experiences at least offer you variation based on your input! The gameplay is so limited in scope that it just barely meets the definition of a video game in my opinion, which is really sad to say.

Last Stop is sadly an uninspired experience when looking at it in an honest perspective. Its premise has compelling potential but it loses all sense of cohesive structure by choosing to split itself across three separate stories, each of varying quality. The lack of distinct gameplay only reinforces how little the game actually asks of you the player, which I think is its most notable crime because engaging interaction is a core blueprint of any video game experience. The only thing stopping me from hating this game outright is its clear charm layered in its design. Despite it’s flaws you can feel the developers wanted to create a unique experience inspired by the culture of the country they are based in, and it’s that honest intention that saves it from being an experience worth writing off.