Last Oasis
Donkey Crew
Survival games, especially ones of the post-apocalyptic variety, seem to be a dime-a-dozen these days. H1Z1 and the Arma 2 modded version of DayZ kicked everything off and ever since then, we’ve seen the release of an entire plethora of post-apocalyptic titles. These include Rust, the standalone version of DayZ, Miscreated, and many others.
To be quite frank, none of these games seem to stand out from one another since none of them have any sort of fleshed-out backstories. You just know that something big and bad happened, everything is desiccated, and resources are much harder to come by.
Last Oasis, by deveopers Donkey Crew, aims to change that. You play as a nomad who lives in a vast desert. You can either huff it around on foot (which takes forever), or you can build gigantic, wind-powered, wooden walkers. Not only are these constructs unique in themselves, but the game’s backstory is pretty interesting as well.
The Earth of Last Oasis stopped spinning due to a cataclysmic event. As a result, one side of the planet is caught in a deep freeze and the other is a scorching hell-scape. As the Earth continues to orbit around the sun, it creates a narrow band of hospitable land that is highly contested by nomadic bands of survivors. Unless they constantly stay on the move, they’ll either be burnt to death by the rays of the sun or freeze in the arctic regions.
My first impression of Last Oasis is that it reminded me vaguely of Conan Exiles. Just as with that game, you’ll start with nothing and have to gather basic supplies such as wood, stone, and food. It also shares the same excellent graphical fidelity with Exiles. But that’s where the similarities end. Last Oasis is a survival MMO and as such, allows for both a much larger amount of players on its servers, and also has larger areas to explore. However, in order to prevent lag from happening, the developers decided to cap the game’s servers off at 100 people.
Things in Last Oasis heat up (no pun intended) rather quickly when compared to other survival games. Your first walker doesn’t require an inordinate amount of resources to build, so this allows you to not only have a mobile spawn point, but also a much larger (and more efficient) range of traversal.
Players travel over the sand dunes between hexagonal maps known as oases. Understandably, water is a very valuable resource. Not only for basic survival needs but water also powers the rickety walkers. Smaller vessels require less water, while larger ones need much more water to power them. Therefore, players must stay on the move in order to locate more and more resources.
When opposing groups encounter each other, fighting usually breaks out for ownership of any resources on hand, including the walkers themselves. Fortunately, Last Oasis has a pretty intuitive combat system in place for when conflicts occur. This includes ranged combat mechanics as well as a pretty fun melee system. The melee combat system, in particular, seems to be more in-depth than in other, similar survival games.
There are 13 different types of walkers that you can construct at the moment. They not only look spectacular, but they’re also a lot of fun to travel on because of the way they move and the creaking and groaning noises that their gears, pullies, and ropes make.
There are also AI creatures that inhabit the lands of Last Oasis. Some of these are small, like wild monkeys that will randomly attack you, while others are huge, such as the massive monsters which roam the dunes. Luckily, you can modify and customize your walkers to be able to take on these various dune-dwelling denizens, and you can provide them with sturdier frames and more advanced weapons.
As it stands, Last Oasis is a very fun survival MMO game that has enough unique elements going for it to make it stand out from the increasingly crowded post-apocalyptic crowd of games. With a few more content updates, this could be my new survival game addiction.
OVERALL SCORE: 86%
Last Oasis has some pretty good looking graphics that make its science fiction gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
Visit CyberpowerPC’s website to check out all of the other great deals as well!