The Last Stand: Aftermath

Having played the Last Stand Flash games a bunch, I was excited to see another title release with a lot more polish behind it. Making it a rogue-lite is a bit of an interesting choice, but it ends up working pretty well. First, let's get the bad out of the way: this game is not for those seeking a story-rich experience. Dialogue only occasionally has punctuation and conversations are fairly brief. The core thrust of the context you need is that society collapsed because of zombies and whatever's left is sending out various infected people to explore the abandoned wastes for the source of a signal. They give you a handful of supplies and a functioning car (with terrible mileage), and send you on your way. Also, if you [i]do[/i] run out of gas on your way somewhere, you get mobbed by a horde of the undead as you try to get enough gas to keep going. Aside from that, though, the game's pretty fun. you get a wide selection of guns and melee weapons to choose from, including craftable items that can give you a lot more survivability. In true rogue-lite/like fashion, however, you are inevitably up to the mercy of RNGesus. If batteries and electronics don't drop for you on a run, you're not gonna be opening up the various crates and antiviral containers along the way. Ammo is fairly common, but not guaranteed to drop for the weapons you're using. Expect to be drowning in shotgun shells when you really need 5.56 rounds. Combat itself is a little wonky, but not too bad. Most enemies end up getting downed in one shot once you obtain higher grade gear (and upgrades to damage), and the tougher enemies can either be stun-locked by melee attacks/sustained fire or blasted with fire. Speaking of which, the flame thrower you can craft ends up being deliriously overpowered by the endgame due to its ability to ignore/strip armor on enemies, while also incapacitating them before they perish. Other highlights include the automatic rifles and SMGs, which allow you to properly deal with swarms of enemies (or single targets, so long as you have trigger discipline). There is a somewhat shallow research system, including the infamous "Increase Amount of Research Gained" upgrade which rapidly allows you to max out all research within just a few decent runs. Supply, however, is somewhat more frugally obtained, requiring supply bags and sacrificing loot crates to your base so that you permanently unlock components, medical supplies, and even weapons at your base's armory. However, since medical supplies are shockingly common throughout the game, you'll find yourself skipping a lot of these crates once you get a sizable amount of your inventory stocked up. Inventory management is a chore, though your max capacity can be upgraded either normally or via mutation. Slowly consuming your health bar is the rate of your infection, which grants mutations at intervals that are mostly positive, if a bit niche at times. Some increase your defense to make up for the health loss, and others allow for stronger melee attacks, though those rapidly become obsolete as your encumbrance increases and your stamina gets wiped out with every swing. Antivirals stop the infection for a time, but you can only hold one at a time (for some reason) and you can go multiple areas without a single one dropping. There's quite a bit of diversity in the zones you travel to, with each zone having its own unique enemy types and areas to explore. You're even allowed to skip past zones you've already cleared, so long as you have the gas to do so. I do admit that as you get closer to the end of the final zone, the prospect of having to march all the way across the map again should your current character die gets more and more annoying, but that's just part of the rogue-lite/like genre. After some trial and error with various builds, I managed to beat the game in about 34 hours, which isn't that bad for the price. You can continue playing after completing the main "story", but it doesn't add all that much from I could gleam. I'd suggest picking this up if you enjoy zombie shooters or a somewhat less complicated rogue-lite.