Welcome Time Wasters!
This week I’m returning to one of my favorite series that I’ve reviewed as part of this Time Waster gig, The Last Door. Except that this time around, I’m looking at The Last Door – Collector’s Edition on Steam.
If you’ve never read any of my reviews for Season One of The Last Door, here they are.
Alright, now that you’re up-to-date I can start talking about The Last Door – Collector’s Edition.
The Last Door – Collector’s Edition takes the first four chapters of the series and puts them together under one game. The story told in these chapter is from the perspective of Devitt and is really well done. It has a lot of Lovecraft to it in terms of feel.
The Last Door – Collector’s Edition also includes four minisodes. These minisodes offer players a look into the lives of other characters in the series. Some of these characters are affected by Devitt’s actions in some way and others just kind of mesh into the overall story. Unfortunately, each of these episodes is only a couple of minutes long. They’re neat for sure, but I felt a little more should have been added for a game going under the “Collector’s Edition” title.
The gameplay in The Last Door – Collector’s Edition has remained mostly the same as in the initial releases of each chapter. However, there have been a few changes. One of these changes is Devitt’s walking speed. In Chapter One of the series, Devitt was really slow when walking and it makes going anywhere a time consuming task. Likewise, Devitt was a little too gung ho in Chapter Two and would briskly walk through darkened areas. This was remedied in Chapter Three to have Devitt walk fast normally, but slow down when walking through darkness. The Collector’s Edition applies these changes to the first two chapters and it really helps with the pacing. It also adds in the ability to doubleclick a door the player has already been through to instantly go through it. These are welcome changes.
The graphics and audio in The Last Door – Collector’s Edition have basically remained the same when compared to their web browser counterparts. This is fine as the minimalistic approach works well with the series and it’s always had wonderful audio.
Here’s where things go a little south for The Last Door – Collector’s Edition. The game is $10 on Steam. For what the series is, this isn’t a bad price, if these episodes weren’t already free to play online. The additional content and changes to gameplay are nice, but I can’t really say that they warrant purchasing the series if you’ve already played it. Newcomers to the series may want to look at it for the gameplay updates, but even then they might just prefer to play it in their browser for free. Adding in the soundtrack for the episodes as a bonus would have easily made this collection worth the price.
Overall, The Last Door – Collector’s Edition contains four episodes of great story telling packed into one little neat package. The minisodes and gameplay changes are nice additions, but they aren’t exactly what I imagined a Collector’s Edition would include.The games themselves are great, but this collection is a little lacking.
The Last Door – Collector’s Edition earns 2.5 GiN Gems out of 5!