The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom [Xbox]

Developed by Stage Clear Studios and published by Outright Games, The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom follows on from the Netflix series with an all-new adventure. Jack and the gang have discovered that Malondre, Queen of the Slime Monsters, wants to summon Rezzoch, Destructor of Worlds – and they’ve got history. So as Jack, Quint, June and Dirk, you must set out to locate the missing pieces of the Staff of Doom before Malondre does, and prevent Rezzoch from returning! You can play solo or co-op, with co-op being the expected option being that there are four main characters in the show, but four-player was actually far more frustrating with constant issues if characters go even slightly too far apart - so it’s best to just stick to single-player.

Presented with a semi-open world map filled with different events, from your Main Quests and Secondary Quests, to Dungeons, Big Mama Challenges, Wormungulous fast travel spots and more, the gang will face off against a variety of enemies as you progress. For the most part, the Quests take on the same fetch quest format, with you being required to head to some far off part of the map to collect something for various upgrades, or to find pieces of the Staff. It’s a little tiresome to travel the map at times, due to roadblocks or Quest-related blockades cutting you off requiring a chunk of backtracking, and travelling on foot isn’t exactly the quickest. There are Big Mama Stations dotted around the map for you to call on Big Mama, the gang’s trusty vehicle - reminiscent of the Catch-a-Ride system in Borderlands - although these are a bit temperamental and seem to have some issues trying to get them to spawn; and there’s also Wormongulous, who you can call upon to reach previously unlocked areas.

Visually, the game world encapsulates the world of the show - and by extension, the books. The overall aesthetic of the game is very loyal to the series itself, although some areas of the map are fairly sparse. There are short cutscenes that left a fair bit to be desired, as instead of utilising footage from the series (where appropriate) or new footage, it is done with still shots and limited voice acting, which seems like a huge missed opportunity. The visual quality of these segments is sometimes a little bit inferior too, and this is with us playing on Xbox Series X. There’s a Bestiary to keep track of all of the Characters, Zombies, Monsters, Slime and Bosses - with a sub-genre of Captains within the Bosses section, all greyed out until you come across them for the first time, but it’s interesting to look back over. The soundtrack is pretty average, with tunes reminiscent of the show - but they feel very generic here due to the severe repetitiveness.

Combat is pretty mediocre, with the ability to just hold down a single button for pretty much the entire game to attack repeatedly. You can also use a stronger attack, but with the standard attack just repeating constantly, you probably won’t find much need to use the heavy attack aside from breaking certain barriers. Different weapons will have different effects, but are mostly pretty similar across the board too, which is pretty disappointing, in all honesty. At certain points in the story, it will switch to a defense-style mode where enemies come in waves to attack the treehouse, but these are super easy and a little tedious. I know it’s a kids’ game, but it really does fall flat in a lot of areas.

As you progress, you’ll collect scrap from quests and from destroying lampposts and other environmental objects. Scrap works slightly differently depending on if you’re playing co-op or not, with it being shared when collected in co-op (meaning only one player needs to pick it up) and duplicating across party members for buying relevant upgrades independently. Playing solo you’ll have just one pile of scrap that will be depleted regardless of which character you play and upgrade, even after switching. There are upgrades available for your Tree House, Equipment, as well as Turrets to protect your base from waves of zombies. Different weapons have their own base stats, and upgrade to have different pros and cons to each - however the armour all seems to be pretty much identical stat-wise, with upgrades increasing them to the same levels, and the only difference being the 25% boost being for different things, such as speed, health or defence (although some have completely identical stats).

Controls can be a little janky at times with the RB controls often not responding when you try to call on Big Mama, and similarly, there’s an often frustrating issue of certain unlockable doors (with levers that also need to be pulled using RB) that won’t respond, because they’re actually tied to story events - but there’s nothing to tell you this at the time aside from them simply not working. There’s tonnes of stuff to do and find across the world, with Collectibles in the form of Comic Books; viewable in the Collectibles menu, showing you all of the different cover artwork. There is also a Trophy Case for all of the Big Mama Challenges that you can take part in, which involve you following fairly simple timed routes in your truck. Chests can be found dotted around the map too, but annoyingly, any chests already collected will remain on the mini-map as something to be discovered, leading to a lot of reopening the same chests (for less reward than the first time). Priced at £34.99 on the Xbox Store, this is one of those games that always seems to be priced a little higher than normal due to the licensing, and honestly – as much as we love the source material, the game does have areas that it is lacking. If anything, I’d say this is geared to a much younger audience, but if you want to check this out, I’d recommend holding out for a sale, or pick up a preowned physical copy.

In the end, we decided to give The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom the Collecting Asylum rating of 5/10.

Have you played The Last Kids on Earth yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x

Thank you to Swipe Right PR for The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom Xbox review code!