The Final Station Review – All Aboard!

The Final Station is a survival game where you play a train conductor. Is this ticket worth the price of admission? Or should you wait for the next train? Check out this The Final Station Review and make your choice!

The Final Station Review

You play as an unnamed Train Conductor who just got back from vacation. At first, everything seems normal. The premise of the game has you taking the train from station to station, picking up passengers. At each station, you need to get yourself a code. To do this, you have to do a bit of exploring to find the station manager. Once you have this code, it’s on to the next station. The people at each station are just living their lives, buying groceries, working, reading, or doing any other normal, everyday activities. However, when you arrive at the third station, things start to change. Routes to the south suddenly stop, and they are no longer selling tickets on other trains. Still, it isn’t your problem, as you just have to deal with your train and your passengers. On the way to the next station, everything changes. There are gun shots and explosions along the way and there is no word from the council on what’s going on.

This is where the game really begins.

When you arrive at the next station, you drop off your passengers and meet up with the general. He gives you a mission to deliver some important cargo to a city called New Coastfield. Your orders are to follow your train route and rescue any survivors you come across. Of course, you are sent out without actually knowing what you are up against. On your way back, you run into “it,” a void black creature with bright white eyes. Unarmed, you have to either run or toss a chair at it. That was your first encounter, but it won’t be your last. Your journey to find survivors will force you into battle with these creatures again and again, but soon you will be armed and able to fight back. Some people might call them zombies, but I don’t think that quite fits this scenario.

You will now go from station to station, clearing out creatures and rescuing survivors while looking for codes to keep the train going. As things progress, you get more survivors, netting you a bigger reward. Each survivor is worth money and other materials. Every so often, you will come across a hub where you drop the survivors off. This is where you can spend cash to buy weapon upgrades, food, and med kits. Getting the survivors there is a game within itself. Each survivor has both a health bar and a food bar. Food goes down over time, and for some survivors, so does health. You need to keep the health bar from hitting 0, or else you miss the reward for a survivor. If food hits 0, then health will drop automatically.

Sounds easy, right? Unfortunately, food and med kits are limited, so you really have to try to prevent yourself from using them whenever possible. On top of that, the train has issues you need to deal with. If you don’t, the train overheats and the passengers start to lose HP. It can get chaotic at times, but when you finally drop them all off and reap the rewards, it feels awesome. The hubs are also where you typically get more info about the story and what’s going on around the area. Your passengers will also chat among themselves while you are traveling on the train. It’s a good way to add info to the story, but if you aren’t in the same car as them you can’t see what they are saying which is a bummer.

When facing the creatures in the game you will have a few different options. First off, you do get a few guns to use, but ammo is limited. Head shots will drop most of them in one shot but even then, if you miss you will take a hit. You can also melee most of the enemies and do a charge melee that brings some creatures down in one hit. The charge melee has a cooldown though so you cannot spam it to win. There are also chairs, crates, and other things you can throw at enemies to bring them down. These are pretty limited and using them can help you save ammo and HP. You do have a minor crafting system that will help you will supplies. You can craft med kits and ammo but the supplies to craft are also very limited. Playing smart with your med kits and ammo is the best way to make it through the game.

The Final Station really became more about the mystery of what’s going on more than anything else. At first, it was just move the train and rescue the people. As I got more passengers and read more notes, however, I started to realize things weren’t quite as they seemed. At the end of the 4-5 hour journey, you might have a few more questions than answers, but overall the ride was worth the toll.