Digital Foundry investigates the dregs of the Nintendo eShop.
Iknewbad games - or so I thought.
Every week, the shop is flooded with a selection of low-budget rubbish that would make Steam blush.
Like Call of Duty or Battlefield?
The tactic worked and the digital detritus spread like wildfire across the internet.
You’re presented with three options - New Game, Loading and Controls.
The premise involves a time machine, zombies and the government.
The game then loads into an exceptionally choppy first-person cutscene showing your character waking up in a hospital room.
Welcome to The Last Hope, I guess.
You play as time-travelling commando Brian on his quest to…
I don’t know, save humanity?
It’s not really clear.
The entirety of this game takes place in and around this U-shaped street littered with zombies and muscle cars.
The world is slathered in low resolution, repeating textures with virtually no lighting.
Shadows are exceptionally low-res and barely coherent.
In certain instances, the game appeared to break with visible glitching appearing across the screen.
Weird blooming artefacts, flickering shadows and broken alpha textures.
All story telling is handled via text boxes which often awkwardly intersect with other UI elements.
This is the only ambient sound in the entire game and you will hear it from start to finish.
Somehow though, it’s the design and economy of this game that fascinates me the most.
To understand this, let’s look at the game’s economy.
I found enough supplies to craft two of them.
Stamina also drains permanently if you run.
Add another eight zombies or so if you count the Molotov cocktail.
There are roughly three to four times that many zombies total in this game.
Why does this matter?
Just be careful not to spam through the Unity logo and start a new game by accident!
If you reached this point without the required ammo, you won’t be able to do it.
What makes this all the more hilarious is the structure.
Objectives are laid out in a linear fashion on this U-shaped boulevard.
So yeah, what else can I say?
This also got me thinking about smaller projects in general.
Testing The Last Hope has been both cathartic yet also eye opening.
The Last Hope is designed to take your money.
There is no game here - this is effectively a scam.
