The Last Dogma dubs itself a ‘dark comedy’. It’s definitely an attempt at satire, but I’m not sure what it wants to poke fun at. The human race in general, perhaps? Whatever it may or may not be, there’s no doubt that it’s absolutely insane.

Many solo-developed games rely heavily on their story to shine past their humble presentation, so it’s a shame that The Last Dogma’s story feels like it was written by a fifteen year old militant atheist that’s a little too twisted to be coherent and a little too self-aware to be funny.

In an alternate post-Cold War reality, the USA, led by President Sam Shotgun (sigh) manages to dominate the world through religion. His tactics include dropping bibles in Africa which turns the seemingly savage population into psychotic Christians.

There’s probably more to the story than I’m implying, but if there is then it went over my head. The game is such a mess of flitting themes and environments that I found it near impossible to keep up. The only constant message I could identify was ‘religion is bad’.

The protagonist is a government agent tasked with doing… something. I’m unsure. At the beginning of the game his plane crashes for… some reason. I’m not sure about that either.

Maybe it’s lack of clarity or constancy ties in with it’s overall message, but no game developer will get brownie points from me for making a game purposely impenetrable to prove a point. Game’s should be enjoyable to play in the very least. Even the crushingly depressing Spec Ops: The Line is ultimately fun to play and reasonably accessible.

The key issue this game has is the alarming shoddiness of its execution. I know it was developed by one individual, but I’ve played and reviewed several solo-developed games, so it’s lack of quality can not be excused by the nature of its development.

The graphics are terrible; the voice-acting seems to drop in and out randomly; the shooting seems horribly inaccurate and each level seems completely disconnected from the last.

The tutorial would give the impression that The Last Dogma was setting itself up to be a more interactive version of The Stanley Parable, with a British narrator bemoaning the predictability of tutorial sequences. However, without any warning the player is dropped into a run-down town full of Christian cannibals spouting fourth-wall breaking dialogue.

If The Last Dogma was in alpha, I might say that it had potential. Whilst it’s setting and story feel completely schizophrenic, there are the odd glimpses of something truly unique. It’s a shame that whatever good points the game has are swamped by crude design and glitches.

I was only fifteen minutes into the game when I apparently slipped into a room that I wasn’t supposed to be in which had no exits. I rebooted, and twenty minutes later I began a conversation with an NPC which never ended, as when I clicked on a dialogue option, nothing happened.

It’s the gameplay that really sinks this game without a trace though. It took me an extraordinary amount of time just to get through the first level. Most of the NPCs seemed uninterested in me, despite their grizzly appearances, then out of nowhere two or three enemies started firing at me from a nearby building.

I fired back with my own shoddy weapon, but either my aim is terrible or the shooting is bugged, but there wasn’t any indication that my foes were taking damage, and I had little ammunition. The result was that I kept dying.

Unfortunately, that was my experience with most of The Last Dogma, i.e. bumbling through the game with a scowl on my face asking myself ‘what the hell is going on?’

I wanted to like this game. I get no pleasure from pissing all over the efforts of a clearly ambitious solo-developer, but The Last Dogma is a complete disaster. I hope Sasha Darko’s next game is a more pleasant affair.

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