Weekly Trash - Last Night On Earth: The Zombie Game

Harkonnen13 wrote:
After trying to force myself to like Twilight Creations Zombies (and failing) LNoE was the perfect replacement. This game does indeed play out like a scene from a Zombie movie. The play flows, playing either side is fun, Kick-ass components, and it's generally a blast. This game is the zombie fix I needed.


Weekly Trash is a series of discussion threads in the F:AT forums. Each week a comment from the recommendations database is highlighted here. Don't be shy about posting further comments, questions, answers, funny stories, pictures, "this game sucks", or anything else related to the game.

Very good, funny game; absolutely not what I expected.

I hate the artwork, but it fits its B movie theme.

I am normally a sucker for zombie games, but the photo-artwork turned me away from this one. The rural setting feels wrong for the genre, and the dice-rolling mechanic doesn't sound any better than the one in Zombies!!! Even so, I would be willing to try it sometime.

Rural setting feels wrong for the genre? Have you seen "Night of the Living Dead"? Have you not read "The Walking Dead"? Not all zombie movies have to take place in a crowded urban environment. They run the gamut. A zombie outbreak can occur anywhere.

I think the photo style artwork is great and fits the theme of a B-grade horror movie very well. But then I generally don't care that much about artwork, a good game is a good game.

Played it the once so far and it was OK - kinda Zombies on a board game but with a few Arkham/rpg type abilities and with a set victory condition ... but still quite basic.
I'd play it again, but wouldn't make a dash for it or put it above most other games we play.

What about Zombietown, has anyone tried that ? I saw a few of our younger guys playing it some months back but didn't really take much notice.

I too am curious about Zombietown. It looks like it has some neat idea, especially the combat system. But comments at BGG make it sound like the game is yet another misfire from Twilight Creations.

I don't think the rural setting is wrong for the genre (see cited references), I just don't like it. It worked for NOTLD, and that's about it. Plus, NOTLD and WALKING DEAD had a very grim, dark tone. This goofy B-movie shit is terrible- har har! Here comes the diner cook with a meat cleaver! The bumpkin blonde with a chainsaw! Dumb, typical nerd humor. And dumb, typical nerd humor is almost entirely based on incongruous juxtaposition like that. Romero gets away with comedy because it's backed up with satire and it's not empty like LNOE.

I still think LNOE is just OK. It's fun, I don't mind playing it, and Uba's dead on that it's a great game for kids who dig the graveyard scene. But I never find myself wanting to play it, it's always something somebody asks for but I never suggest.

I'm so tired of anything to do with zombies that isn't directly Romero or Fulci related...that may be why my enthusiasm for the game is fairly low.

I agee with Uba that LNOE is really aimed at the younger generation. It is everything I would have wanted at that age. My group plays it occasionaly, but it doesn't really have the "meatiness" of a superior AT game.

Their new game, A Touch of Evil, is a little better for older players, but I think it is like stepping from the 9-12 age of LNOE to the 13-15 age. A good game, quick, and fun; however, it really feels like Arkham Lite. Perhaps Flying Frog will continue to make games that are a leaping off point for young ATers -- nothing wrong with that.

Ha! It is a stoner game, isn't it?

I remember this poster in middle school that was a list of things that you could get high on other than weed...it included chili dogs, flying kites, macarame, and walking on the beach. But not playing LNOE.

ubarose wrote:

Screw it. If no one else is going to say it, I am. It's a stoner game. Barnes can't appreciate it like those of us whose misspent youth included raiding the chem lab for rubber tubing, because he spent his youth high on life.

Hilarious. You keep callin em like you see em Uba!

Stoner game? Hunh. Interesting point. I don't do drugs anymore, but back in the day, our group's stoner games were Grass, and uh, Runequest. Nuclear War was definitely not a stoner game, it was too mean and vindictive. The one time I played Nuclear War with some serious potheads, the game ended in total global destruction.

(We had a house rule that if you hit something with 100 megatons at once, as opposed to spread out with the MX missile, you got to spin the spinner. If you hit the triple yield result, the world was destroyed. And then everybody who was still in the game at that point had to shotgun a beer. Otherwise, it was just a gulp of beer for every 5 million of your people that got killed.)

So, the world got completely destroyed, and one of those stoners had to shotgun a beer with us, and he did that kind of melted pothead whining, "Ohh Myannnn, I can't believe you destroyed the whole planet. Myannnn, that sucks."

Long time lurker, but registered for this thread.

All this talk of LNoE not working because it's rural or 'goofy' is crap. Goofy and rural is *the* tone and setting for the classic (I said it) films this game pays homage to.

Here's a list for those hung up on 28 Days Later (a rip-off film if there ever was one), serious urban trash:

Killer Klowns from Outer Space
Return of the Living Dead
Night of the Creeps
Dead Alive
Tremors
Critters
Arachnophobia
Gremlins
Slither
etc.


All of the above are set in a rural/small town and have a light tone to the horror (I could see a case made for Dog Soldiers and others as well). We don't have games about these masterpieces, but they are the inspiration behind LNoE. The character arch-types are exactly those for the genre and fit the concept of random strangers thrown together for survival.

I read a lot of talk about needing more serious horror games. That's fair, but there's always FoD, AH, or Dawn of the Dead if you're so inclined. Don't knock LNoE because you're looking for a dark horror game. This ain't it.

Now, the game itself does have a lot to be desired, but is preferable to Zombies! and is the current king when looking for a fun b-movie evening.

(Edit: For the record, I too am sick of zombies, but I've been that way since the resident evil series of games, I couldn't even force myself to read the Walking Dead trades past the second volume...yawn...but until FFP puts out their martian invasion game LNoE is the best I've played that covers the 80's b-movie vibe. Also, Return of the Living Dead is king of the zombie film. A Punk/Zombie mash-up, how can it go wrong?!)