Unbelieveable, but...
...no save system. It's still a pretty fun game and the levels don't feel like they drag on forever. My complaint on the save system is that sometimes you have to go out in the middle and are then forced to start from the beginning. That and perhaps the inclusion of a higher difficulty would make the game pretty much flawless. Nice job, it's by far the best defense game to date.
Great "defend your X" game!
Graphics: Clipart people track and fire at shuffling clipart zombies. Realistic gun designs, probably derived from photographs. Excellent diversity of characters, including a very rare zombie clown.
They made great use of color in this to evoke mood... nihilistic tones on the zombie horde contrast with a spectacularly beautiful sunrise.
"Surface" is a little rough, especially on the characters, but I wouldn't have it any other way, given the subject matter.
Not overly gorey, by Newgrounds' standards, but corpses pile up, which is a nice touch.
Style: I called these dudes "clipart people," and I stand by it. They look like "trace bitmap-ed" photographs, and are animated in an anatomically correct but otherwise unremarkable way. Nothing stands out, and nothing feels stylized.
(Normally, I would prefer crisp, stylized characters, but the drab realism works very well for this particular game.)
Sound: No music, but just the right sounds. You know? The chirping crickets add tons of ambiance, and there's gunfire and not much else. No moaning zombies, but I didn't miss them. I heard enough excessively moaning zombies when I played They Hunger to last me a lifetime.
Violence: On the headburstometer, these are actually some pretty damn tasteful decapitations. I've seen much worse.
Interactivity: Beautiful. I've played Defend Your X games before that threw too much or too little at you at a time. I've played flash games that sucked because the author milked the reloading animations. I've played Buy Stuff Games that had confusing menus, unfair prices, or too many simmilar items to choose from, sight unseen. The Last Stand avoids all of these problems by Keeping It Simple.
You start with a gun just tough enough to keep you alive while you recruit more survivors, you find new guns in a pre-determined order, and if the firing charecteristics of the new gun don't work out for your style of play, you can always keep your old favorite gun on-hand, just in case.
Your allies don't use the other guns you find, but if they did it would become a "Watch Your Turret" simulator. I've played those. They're funny to watch, but not good for much.
The game is short, yes. But it's not TOO short. This is important to note. If anything, the small number of levels just means you get new goodies to play with that much more frequently.
And my GOD, that final rifle is fun to use... I think my personal record is four with one shot, two of them headshots. :D
There's something to add. Records. Stats. Achievements. Bonuses for making a lot of headshots, that sort of thing. But they're certianly not neccessary for the game to be fun.
Not seeing the life meter of your ramparts makes you feel more threatened than you neccessarily are, which is always a good thing in a survival horror game.
Humor/Story: Heh. Post-it notes are funny. Not Living Dead funny, not even quite comedy relief, but just a very light touch. There was a story in there, too, but a lot of times I just plumb forgot to read the Diary after each level.
There's another suggestion. Make the diary page display automatically after each sunrise, with a simple click to get rid of it. That or make it possible to flip through previous days' diary pages. It was a nice surprise when I discovered it, but it was annoying that if I missed a day, I lost part of the story.
Overall: Excellent Zombie game! Excellent Defend Your Noun!
Not scary in any way, shape or form, of course. On that level, it fails as a Survival Horror Game. But I think we've already played enough geuinely scary zombie games that it's hard to give us anything new, especially in as visually limited a medium as Flash.
So, in the ambiance department, it was no Silent Hill. It wasn't even a Submachine, a Resident Evil, or a Parasite Eve. You're outnumbered, but you're powerful enough that you don't feel helpless. You know you can hold out indefinitely, as long as you're careful. So, more like Resident Evil 2 or Silent Hill 3.
Good Stuff!
Great game..!
Loved this game the first time, loved it even more the second time and i still love the... 9th time i think it is... Great game...
excellent
amazing game, the only thing I suggest is to make difficulty modes, cause its fun, but easy. Other than that, great job!
Damn, just damn.
God this game is awesome. One of the best shooter games ever. I've never felt so satisfied killing zombies. By the way, whats with the random clown on level 19 or something.