App Army Assemble: The Last Train - Is this narrative-driven adventure game engaging enough to keep you on track?

The Last Train is a narrative-driven adventure game that sees players taking on the role of the last pilot following the conclusion of an alternate history WW2. They'll have to choose which civilians to help and which to ignore. Our reviewer Sergio Velasquez enjoyed his time with it, but it's always good to get a few more opinions, so we handed to the game over to our App Army. 

Here's what they thought: 

I found this game very repetitive. Pick up passengers, scavenge for food and fuel, drop off passengers and repeat. The graphics were sombre, as usual, I turned the music off because it droned, but the controls were easy to use and at the beginning of the game, it was entertaining. However, the same tasks time and again together with the background scenes repeated with small variations gave the game a limited appeal. I played it for about half an hour but that was enough to establish it wasn’t for me.

The Last Train played on iPad Pro 10.5. A very atmospheric game with a very simple gameplay arc. I quite like the art style. A lot of deep shadows. The only colours are brown, black and white (with some red here and there) but I think that supports the post-apocalyptic theme. You pick up passengers and travel from station to station bringing them across North America. You can take any path you want but have a limited number of days to get there so it’s best to choose passengers on your route. You can collect resources by scavenging towns. I enjoyed my time with it so far, but it does feel a bit repetitive.

I like dystopian post-war games like this one, especially when it's on the managing resources / crafting side of things, but I found this game to be a bit dull and boring. It's nice when it starts, and it gives you high hopes. Some voice acting, a dark soundtrack, some planning to do, where to take people within the timeframe needed, get resources for the job and explore the cities for more resources. But then it's pretty much the same going forward, rinse and repeat. I feel no emotion from the people stories and background, and the crafting is very basic. For people coming in for the first time to this kind of game, it could be a good thing. But there's nothing new here, and others do a much better job at this. Oh, the mini-game with the gears when the train is travelling, blergh, awful.

I was excited by this game ‘cause I’m a fan of all that alternative dystopic post-WWII backgrounds present in games, books and movies (yes, I love The Man in the High Castle), but unfortunately, TLT adds nothing new to the management-craft genre, indeed it seems to be more than one step back in these days, though it’s not that bad in terms of graphics and sounds, it’s just a shame that its playability is really boring, sadly I wouldn’t recommend it at this point. Some on-screen texts, like states names on the map, are totally unreadable on an iPhone, another motive to avoid it.

In the Last Train, you control a train that picks up and drops people off as it weaves its way across the devastated USA just after WW2. Passengers provide resources that feed your train crew and keep the engine running. Graphically it’s attractively bleak but sadly gameplay is as dull as the colour scheme. Not helped by a silly cogs game that I never could get right to reduce resource consumption. There are better resource management games out there, avoid.

I didn’t actually know anything about the game beyond the quick summary, so the opening scene with the alternate dystopian history caught my interest. Unfortunately, the game didn’t hold that interest for very long. I mean, the idea of transporting people across a post-disaster America with different stories is interesting, but really there appears to be no meat to it. You pick up passengers for whatever purpose and whatever destination, drop them off wherever, and try to keep moving. They don’t seem (as far as I stuck with it anyway) to be interconnected or overarching.

Very simple crafting. The little gear trick to try to save fuel responds with varying sensitivity, which means that it really shouldn’t be there because there’s no point trying to master the meagre technique. Really aside from the concept, the only thing I really liked about it was the vibration effect as the train took off. Yup, that’s it. And that doesn’t justify the ticket price to me. So much like my passengers, the trip ended quickly. Sooner than anticipated. Sorry. Nice try. If you’re a hardcore survival game fan, you might enjoy this. But there are so many others already out there.

I am a bit torn with my review of this game, to be honest. On one hand, the visual style and alt. History tone is pretty neat. On the other hand, I feel like this is a rehash of Oregon Trail with a few tweaks. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but just be aware of this going in. You control a train that picks up passengers of your choice at different stations. The people all want to go somewhere within a certain amount of days. You have to plan your supplies and route in order to maximize fuel and food consumption and get everyone where they need to go.

Passengers will pay you with various goods or tools and you can scavenge for them at all the towns located near the stations. There is a bit of incremental growth in the game as you make new things to aid you in your task. As some have said, it's a bit grindy but I found the game to be entertaining in 20 minutes bursts. I admit I have not tried the sandbox mode, but with some additional content/features The Last Train could have better replay value. Overall, if you like resource management in the style of the classics maybe pick it up on sale.

There’s an old saying about style over substance that floats through your head whenever you play The Last Train. The black & white faux noir graphics are nice to look at...and that’s a good thing because this is about all the game (if you can call it that) has going for it.

The premise is simple. The worst has happened and the country lies in ruins. You, as the engineer of The Last Train, must ferry people across the country while keeping yourself alive and your train running. Upgrades are available to be crafted. The survival cycle kicks in almost immediately.

The problem comes in when you realize, there’s nothing under this gothic-looking art style. Very little content, very little to do beyond grind...and unfortunately, the grind isn’t that engaging. I kept hoping for something interesting to happen, but it never did. Unless you are a hardcore survival addict...and I don’t think even then The Last Train will grab you, I just cannot recommend it.

The gameplay is uninteresting and the game is sorely lacking in content. The visuals could be interesting, but it is painful to carry these unidentified passengers from left to right while waiting for a cutscene to be triggered without reason and without much interest either. The name of the game is conducive to dreaming, but the simplicity of this application, so empty actually, makes many regret of the great adventure offered in the Transarctica train a long time ago (a game of 1993)!

If you want a survival crafting game in a dark and warlike atmosphere, there is no reason to not replay This war of mine instead. And if you want to play with a little train and to exchange between cities, choose the undervalued « Wizards and Wagons » which offers much more fun!

Snowpiercer, there I said it... Originally a movie, but recently also a series on Netflix about a train running when the rest of the world is frozen. The Last Train plays on the same idea with a world where only one train is left up running.
If I hadn't seen the show or heard of the movie I would probably have thought The Last Train to be up to some unique ideas. Now I know it doesn't. Rather it feels like a game trying to be Snowpiercer without being Snowpiercer. Adding a crafting system that is as light as adding cheese to a sandwich calling it crafting.

The presentation is simple, and never gets me hooked. The voice actor for the seldomly occurring cutscenes sounds as bored as me, and I end up trying to find areas on the screen to poke to move on.

The Last Train tries to combine the rugged harrowing feeling of Snowpiecer with Crazy Taxi picking up an dropping off passengers across the US. It is a combination that never gets me engaged as there is too little to care about.
The gameplay itself is simple as you just set a destination, and off you go. There are some cogs minigame where you can match the green areas but as I never managed to hit it right I do?t know what it does.

I can't recommend The Last Train to anyone at this time. The game needs to be put back in development to figure out if it wants to be a Snowpiercer dystopian game our if it wants to be a Crazy Taxi survival game. As it stands now it is as half baked as President Trump's ideas about the future.

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