Last Mind Standing Review

Note: This review was written before the most recent update and some of the points I had problems with are supposed to be addressed (there is a cut scene at the beginning and some balancing has been done)

Every now and then I get the privilege to play a game by a small developer that comes to me through organic means. In this case, it is a friend of a friend, so when sitting down to play it is impossible not to couch my opinions in mind that person is definitely going to read this, and there is definitely going to be a moment where I might have to have an awkward conversation with my friend if I don’t like the game.

Last Mind Standing is first person shooter platformer, the premise seems to be that you are in virtual reality, and it is triggering memories/nightmares in a person’s brain? Hard to say from what is presented in the game and the description on the store. That is largely irrelevant as the you are dropped straight into the action. Equipped with a pistol the player is presented an abstract world and then enemies spawn. This is the kind of premise I love, any game that is all gas and no brakes is right up my alley. You get different guns, some magic powers, a sweet-ass kick, and some decent parkour abilities to mount ledges and dash through opponents. I particularly liked the punchy shotgun that you get fairly early on that makes dispatching enemies very satisfying, that combined with the sweep kick (that parries bullets) meant that I started to really make progress in the game.

Each level seems to be having a lot of fun too, this is thanks to an art style that made me feel like I had found this hidden on a PC demo disc from the Windows 95 era. The gameplay falls into that category of ‘enthusiast developer working on something they feel passionate about’, the combat is solid but very barebones and exactly the sort of thing I would have played obsessively as a young teen and then talked about in hushed tones with my classmates “Did you hear about Last Mind Standing? It lets you set FBI agents on fire”.

The further you get into the game, the more deranged the visuals get. Yes, things stay low poly, but the way that Last Mind Standing plays with perspectives, and its delight at throwing helicopters, dragons and robot ducks(?) at the player and seeing what might stick makes it feel very refreshing in the current age of deadly serious military shooters.

That said, for those that jump into this game – expect the difficulty to be pitched at about the same level as 90s shooters. Often arenas are littered with ranged enemies that need to be killed while a never-ending swarm of melee enemies charge down the main character. The ranged enemies often take too many shots to kill so crowd management becomes essential, but when you aren’t in the right frame of mind it can feel like a chore and not a challenge.

The feeling of being overwhelmed also extends to the platforming – with the player required to climb up walls then turn 180 degrees and jump to another wall.  Using a mouse and keyboard the game doesn’t do a great job of communicating when the player is properly attached to surfaces when turning, on a controller some of the jumps get too hard too early on with no time to get used to LMS unusual rhythms.

That being said, there is still something entertaining here. The combat, when it clicks, has some of the same qualities of old-school DOOM. The same cannot said of the platforming though as I never quite came to grips with it.

Conclusion

Last Mind Standing is a fun little throwback, that I think has potential for those that like their challenges retro and offbeat. Those are the people that will persevere with the game’s peculiarities, probably even thrive in them. For most others, the onboarding is too punishing that they will not get past the open levels to be able to find the fun.

This game was tested and reviewed on PC (via Steam). All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by the publisher.