Will You Be Humanity’s Champion Against the Life-Enders?

Will You Be Humanity’s Champion Against the Life-Enders?
Last Encounter: The Review

By:GeekyGamerGirl87

Last Encounter, which was developed and published by Exordium Games, is a twin-stick rogue-like shooter that offers solo play as well as the option to do four player local co-op.

For this review, I was given a free copy of Last Encounter to play.

Upon turning on the game I realize how beautiful the game really is and was really impressed by the graphics. I initially ran the game at 1600 x 900 at the fastest graphic setting. Before running it again at 1600 x 900 with the fantastic graphic setting. There are only minor details between the two settings. The main difference is that the fantastic setting is a little crisper. However, running at the fastest graphic setting you’re not going to miss much in terms of graphics.

The story in the game is that Dr. Daniel Connor has found a way to keep humans from dying. However, because he has found a way to do so, it has set off the balance in time opening a worm hole. This has released into their universe the life enders, who want to stop Dr. Daniel Connor from extending life. You are to stop the life enders from doing so, and that pretty much is the storyline.

I did like the fact that they use this storyline to explain your infinite amount of continues, but also felt that the storyline was a bit generic. I feel like the storyline has been done repeatedly and felt that they could have probably put more into it.

Upon starting the game, you get to choose between four different pilots and four different ships. Each have their own set of attributes and pros and cons. You can choose a berserker ship, a bullet absorber ship, and pilots who may have a health or shield boost just to name a few of their perks. Once you pick your pilot and ship, it’s off to the battle, but not before your training of course. I was glad to see that they did take you to a training segment before throwing you to the wolves.

One of the things that did bother me were the controls. I felt that the controls were a bit stiff, even for a twin-stick. I used the gamepad initially to play the game and it felt completely stiff to me. There is no way to adjust the controls to make them flow a little better when it comes to gamepad. Therefore, if you choose to play with gamepad be forewarn that you will have to deal with those controls. Luckily you also have the option of keyboard and mouse, which once I did play with keyboard and mouse; I enjoyed the game a bit more. The flow with keyboard and mouse was a lot better for me once I got used to it.

The game does offer were you can purchase upgrades for your ship before the start of a mission and during the mission.  Although, if you purchase the upgrades through the base they are a little more pricey. Luckily, the money you collect from missions don’t disappear, so you can actually go back to base once you have farm for some cash  to upgrade weapons. Although, these upgrades aren’t permanent. Use the weapon too much and it will disintegrate.

As I stated before, the game does offer solo play as well as four  player local co-op and it really makes you feel like it is better with co-op than playing solo. Once I sorted out the issues with the controls, I realize that the difficulty is a bit on the hard side. I would have liked for the game’s difficulty to be able to be adjusted for solo play. Don’t get me wrong, like any gamer ,I enjoy a good challenge but even for me the difficulty screams out “You must co-op” this.

Which leads me to the co-op aspect of the game; it is local co-op up to four players. It would have been nice for them to do online multiplayer with the game, and as the game is new maybe later on they will add online multiplayer to the game. Not saying that I am against local co-op, but now a days; unless you have a group of friends you game with in your personal life, I feel that local co-op is dying. Most gamers now play online with other people, although I do respect the developer for also trying to utilize the local co-op. If you are one of those who has buddies who come around often and you game, then this game would be great to play and add to the roster of games for game night. Running the game solo, for me after awhile I found it to become a tad bit boring.

Upon clearing the sectors, you then choose another set of sectors to obtain portal keys to advance through the game. It should be noted that not all sectors have keys. Therefore, you may have to jump around a bit to obtain said keys to progress; but that’s only again if you aren’t swarmed by the enemy and killed first.

If you are one who likes to collect achievements, Last Encounter does in fact have that feature. However, for our trading card collectors you won’t be getting any trading cards from Last Encounter as the feature is not implemented for this game.

Overall, Last Encounter is out on May 8^th, 2018 at the price of $14.99 USD. The game isn’t a bad game if you are going to co-op the game. However, if you plan on lone wolfing the game, I would recommend wish listing it and then picking up a copy of the game when it is on sale.