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Lone Survivor Review

Posted on May 21, 2012 by www.Original-Gamer.com

What kind of game did you expect after reading the title? Did you expect a game in which you playing through by yourself as a lone survivor in some kind of world that has been devastated? That’s probably a good guess. Lone Survivor is a 2-D zombie side-scrolling survival adventure that seemed aesthetically pleasing. Unfortunately, the game isn’t as good as I expected.

Lone Survivor by Jasper Byrne mixes some 32-bit graphics with the gameplay mechanics of one of my favorite PS2 games: Disaster Report. This game had everything going for it but somehow it just doesn’t work for me.

SURVIVED THE MONSTERS

The Setting... - One thing that so many games don’t offer these days is a great setting. From when you boot up this game, a mood is already set upon you before you even get to the menu screen. When major publishers put out their titles, they usually just staple their typical five second logo screen. Jasper Byrne, on the other hand, did away with typical loading marketing with just styling his own logo right before the start screen appears giving that eerie feeling.

Set in an urban area with You (really, the character's name is "You") in an apartment complex, the story starts you out after some kind of outbreak has changed humans into what the protagonist calls ‘monsters’. You wake up in your apartment perfectly fine but the whole complex has been ravaged by these monsters and demolished in an attempt fight the outbreak.

The Music... - Visually, the game is fascinating beyond what I expected even after looking through the preview screenshots on Steam but the good music really finishes off that perfect experience I was thirsty for. Jasper Byrne quenched my thirst with over 30 different tracks that coincide with the game very well. The regular game audio wasn’t quite up to the standard of the music but was good enough to add to the overall game experience.

I'M HUNGRY!

Trippy Storylines - This game is definitely not for a mass audience but instead is for those who enjoy slightly scary games with a mix of old school 2D graphics and gameplay. Unfortunately, the trippy storyline didn’t help deepen the experience past those of other games styled in a retro 32-bit way. Every incident made it difficult to follow the story and truly understand what was going on until the end of the game. This caused the adventure not to be as fun as it could have been. Jasper Byrne did a great job on the game but he should have let some other people take over the story aspects to give it the polish that it deserved. According to the ending screen, you can get multiple endings. I ended with the red ending but there are two other endings as well: green & blue ending.

Bad Map - Throughout games over the years, there have been map displays. There have been some good maps and bad maps. This game features one that is just terrible for the design of this game in particular. The map given to you for the apartment is setup for a 3D world but as stated before, this is a 2D game, making exploring the world while using the 3D map very difficult. When I saw a map was featured, I was looking for a classic Metroid style map but I didn’t get one and that’s exactly what this game needed in order to help players figure out where they need to go without having to mentally translate the map from a 3D environment to a 2D one.

This zombie side-scrolling survival adventure seemed cinematically pleasing at first but it doesn’t follow through. The story is full of holes which lead to an obvious and frustrating ending. The game had a very interesting adventure at the start but I just ended up wanting to crawl through one of the holes in the wall and wait for one of the ‘monsters’ to get me.

The Lone Survivor tried to bring an exciting mashup of new adventure titles in a 2D format but it just flopped. As stated before, this game is definitely not for a mass audience. Those who enjoy slightly scary games with a mix of old school 2D graphics and gameplay might get a kick out of it, though. Those gamers also looking for another zombie game mixed in with an adventure title might also want to check out this title, but everyone else can give it a pass.