The Last Express

The Last Express is without a doubt an unique game. Its visual appearance and gameplay is unlike any other game you might have ever played. The story takes place on the last train before the outbreak of the first World War at the end of June 1914. You play the role of Robert Cath, an American physician and adventurer. You were invited aboard the Express by your good friend, Tyler Whitney but when you get into your compartment you find your friend Tyler lying dead on the floor with strange claw-like marks on his face. The Last Express is an adventure game, but not quite an adventure game like all others.

The interface is not-quite-point-and-click. You play in first-person view and can look around and move in fixed steps. There is a small amount of pixel-hunting when you have to find hidden buttons in certain locations, but nothing an experienced adventurer couldn’t solve easily. The Last Express employs an unusual system of saving game positions. You do not get any save game slots, but there is a game clock that you can rewind to any point in the past or you can jump back to major stops on the train’s route. You often don’t know what to do. Nobody is giving you any clearly defined quests.

The animation is unusual, too. Most of the time the animation isn’t fluent and looks more like a slide show (perhaps one frame per second). It doesn’t look nearly as bad as it sounds, The music is quite nice, too—properly dramatic in the right places and recorded in high quality. There is even a lovely violin concerto in the game. Unfortunately, you can’t listen to it much because you have to busy yourself breaking into locked compartments and “borrowing” items while everyone else is enjoying themselves at the concert. But whoever said the adventurer’s life was easy?

The Last Express is a very well-made game, created with love and unprecedented attention to detail. After long and hard thought,  we decided to rate it highly. The story is quite interesting and addicting. The Last Express is a quality game and a classic. That’s why it is worth playing and take place in your collection!

12, October 2011