Last Stand attempts to marry my favorite and least favorite genres, FPS and RTS respectively. Similarly to Base Invaders, it realizes that placing walls and waiting for your money to increase so you can plant towers to inefficiently deal with the problem at hand makes for a frustrating and boring experience, so it lets you jump right into the action.
Last Stand is a game of ideas, not of execution. That's not to say the game is broken or anything, but it's not as polished as it could have been if the development process were not ostensibly so enmeshed with experimentation and brainstorming. To me, that's a good thing. Innovation is the name of the game, if you'll forgive the pun.
There were a few design choices that made getting right into the action and plowing through enemies fun. First off, when dealing with a swarm of little enemies like the ones in this game, getting close to them is often excruciatingly frustrating. This game fixes that by making the enemies unable to attack you. It makes you feel a lot better about going in guns a'blazing, but doesn't remove the sense of threat, as you still have a base to defend. Also, you get more money from enemies killed by hand than by turret, so there is ample incentive to get in there and start shooting.
The RTS aspect is also done well. The tutorials pretty much tell you straightaway which turrets are the OP ones, so pouring all your money into laser turrets only to realize that they're about as effective as a barricade of schoolchildren with spitball launchers is a mistake for which you have only yourself to blame.
This game requires you to make quick decisions...and I mean QUICK decisions. Once you get into it, the game truly pulls no punches. In fact, the difficulty curve is the thing that made me stop playing. It's simply too steep.
My only other gripe with the game is that in trying to create both an RTS and a FPS, it loses what makes each genre great. Shooting enemies is unsatisfying because you'll never be able to take out a sizeable amount of them without relying on your RTS skills; and the RTS element is unsatisfying because you'll never have enough money to do anything without relying on your FPS skills. This kind of conflict is what demolishes any sense of flow.
All in all, it's a fun, unique concept matched with somewhat clumsy execution. Not unworthy of your time, but nothing to take your breath away. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay schizophrenic
Links
Dual Personality, the Game: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=445
