Halloween night. 1996. A group of teenagers awake to find themselves trapped in a dark, twisted reflection of their sleepy hometown of Forest Hills. As they make their way across the East Side High School campus, they realize they are being hunted by a supernatural force taking the forms of fearsome killers. Relentlessly pursued, the teens must band together to fight back, survive, and escape the terrifying anomaly they have come to know as The Nightmare.Alright, so this is a game that I've been waiting quite a while to hear about. When I saw that the closed beta was on the way, I freaked and waited for videos. I freaked out even more however when I managed to snag a key to the Closed Beta on the game's Twitter page, and played as much as I could of the game.
What is the Game?:
Glad you asked. Last Year: The Nightmare is a six player game in which five players take control of the five current characters we know of: Chad the quarterback jock, Nick the nerd, Amber the prom queen and 'mean girl', Troy the cool kid, and Sam the social outcast. Basically generic 1996 teen characters that would be used in any other slasher flick. Meanwhile, one player plays as one of the three Killers: The Slasher (creepy janitor man with an axe), The Strangler (creepy druggie looking dude with a chain and scissors), and The Giant (must I need to describe him?). The teens must complete their escape plans by completing objectives and escaping the level, while the Killers try to stall their plans and kill all of them.
Survivors/Teens:
As I said, the objective for the teens is to escape. They will have 30 seconds as a head start to find scrap and any other supplies before the objectives are given to them. Scrap is used to help the teens upgrade their gear based on what kit they choose: The Medic, The Assault, The Technician, and The Scout. The Assault Class uses brute force to help keep themselves in the game while taking on the killers head on. The Medic keeps people alive and is mainly a support class. The Technician can deploy devastating traps and block off means of entry and exit with barricades. And The Scout can use a device to get a sense of if the Killer is near, whether they're in Physical or Predator form (more on that later), and can see Killer traps. The teens must escape before either the times runs out, or before they all die. If a teen is killed, they are not out the whole game. Similar to the Left 4 Dead games, teens can be rescued out of closets after a certain amount of time has passed after their death. Their closet is shown to all the teens, but also to the Killers, who can ambush these areas or trap them.
Killers:
The objective for the Killer is to either murder all of the teens before they can escape, or stall long enough for the time to run out. As I listed, there are three Killers. The Slasher is an all around decent killer. While he doesn't necessarily have ranged abilities like his other two fellow Killers, he makes it up for decent speed, health, stamina, attack speed, and attack damage. The Strangler has a chain that he can throw, similar to the Smoker from Left 4 Dead and pull teens to him, slowly strangling them till their health is low enough to execute them. He's mainly good for picking off stragglers or separating people, as he's fast (as fuk boi) but lacks health and normal melee damage. The Giant has a crap ton of health, deals a crap ton of damage, and has two abilities. He can charge into teens, and also pick them up before throwing them. He's the easiest to escape from though, since he's so goddamn slow. All the Killers have two huge tools they all share (kinda): Predator Mode and Ambushes. Predator mode allows the Killers to turn invisible, increasing their speed while making them unable to attack, and they must reappear out of site of teens. While in this mode, they can set traps such as opening trap doors to separate teens, or gas grenades on lootable items that temporarily mess with vision and controls. They can also enter Ambush Spots while in this mode. If a Killer is in an Ambush Spot and a teen walks into it's vicinity, the Killer can then instantly kill them. The Slasher crashes through windows and stabs his victim from his spots, the Strangler drags his victims into vents, never to be seen again, and the Giant crashes through walls, crushing teens. Similar to the teens, when a Killer dies, they are not out for the whole game. After about 15-20 seconds, the Killer must respawn as a different character while the one they died as begins to get revived.
The Experience:
I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed what little there was. Of course all classes and characters were available, though there was only one map/mission available: The Gym. In The Gym the teens have made a plan to escape. They have to search and find gas that will fuel up a lift. Once the lift is fueled up, they must move it to where they can access the rafters of the gym and open the escape gate. Once the escape gate opens, the teens have 60 seconds to get to the gate. My first game everyone had a mic including the Killer. It was absolutely hilarious being a teen, listening to everyone freak out as The Slasher crashed through a skylight/window, taking down an ally. Or seeing someone throw a pipe-bomb at the Killer as they were executing a teen, watching as both got taken out. Despite being the same map, rounds always felt refreshing. Everyone had a different playstyle, reaction to things that happened, and just the plain goofiness of the game. While it can be competitive, I feel like the developers for the game wanted it to be and feel goofy, and it worked. It's not supposed to be taken seriously, it's just meant for a bit of scares and fun. The game itself ran fine besides with a bit of connection issues noting that there were no dedicated servers, but it looked pretty good with all the settings up to high. The voice acting of the characters is pretty good, and of course their stereotypes affect what they say and is usually pretty funny. At times the controls were weird and there were a few glitches here and there, but besides that there was nothing that would make me want to pull my hair out. My main and big concern was how powerful the Killers are and stamina. I'll talk about stamina first. The stamina in this game is a joke, and not just for the Giant who has enough to last him for maybe a second. When you sprint, it's not even a run, it's a fast paced jog at most. You have little stamina and it seems to run out after a good three seconds, which is incredibly stupid, especially when you're not even far from anyone, but still can't get to them in time to save them as a teen because you have the stamina of Fat Albert. Even the KILLERS run incredibly slow, and don't even get me STARTED on the Giant. Speaking of Killers, they're a bit weak. Yeah, they can instant kill with Ambushes, but even the Giant struggles in groups, especially with stun items such as the Scanner and the Stun Gun. The Scanner has a flash that lasts forever, in which you can do nothing but watch your health go from 300 to 150-170 in seconds. The Stun Gun can last for TEN SECONDS. TEN. FUCKING. SECONDS. And they can RECRAFT it with barely any scrap OR let it recharge. My suggestion is to nerf stunning equipment just a little bit, maybe increase the health of all the Killers so teens are not encouraged to immediately fight them, and improve the stamina for both Killers and Teens.
I know this wasn't a whole ton I talked about, and I'm definitely not game review material, but regardless I'm still very excited for this game, which should be coming out uh- soon on the Discord Store, which is meh I guess. All I know for a release date at the moment is this fall, but it'll probably get delayed. Anyways, if you've seen gameplay or even played in the Closed Beta, what did you think? Bye~!
