If you ever thought, “Boy, I wish I could play through the
sad opening sequence of Pixar’s “Up” over and over again” do I have the game
for you! Last Day of June is the tragic tale of a man losing the love of his
life in a car accident and then getting to experience that day over and over
again to try and prevent it from happening. The premise is rock solid, but the
execution fails to deliver on the concept. Long load times, repetition, pacing
issues, and the fact the core gameplay isn’t particularly fun sour the
experience. Continue reading for all of the details in our Last Day of June
review.
Game Details
- Publisher: 505 Games
- Developer: Ovosonico
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Adventure
- Pros: Art style; music; solid cast of characters
- Cons: Repetitive; emotional moments lose impact; load times; not especially fun
- MSRP: $20
Very similar to Pixar’s “Up”, the opening of Last Day of
June showcases the storybook love of Carl and June. They’re adorable together
and seemingly perfect. On a trip back from a lovey dovey picnic, however, they
get into a car accident where June is killed and Carl is paralyzed from the
waist down.
At some unspecified point in time later the game returns to
Carl, alone in his house and still distraught over the loss of June. He’s
hungry so he gets in his wheelchair and you have to help him get something to
eat. The can opener is tucked away in a box in June’s makeshift art studio – a
room Carl clearly hasn’t been into in a while – so he reluctantly opens the
door and starts looking around. Suddenly, one of June’s paintings starts
glowing and Carl is whisked away into a memory showing the neighborhood kid
chasing his soccer ball out into the road, which is what caused Carl to wildly
swerve the car and led to their crash and June’s death.
The memory is playable, however, and by moving the kid
around and distracting them with something else – like a kite – the ball won’t
end up in the road and the crash can be avoided. Except that it turns out that
just down the road from the kid and his ball was another accident that also
would have had to be avoided. The idea behind the game is that you have to
enter the memories of all of the residents in the small community on that
fateful day to try and find a perfect combination of events that will result in
June surviving.
It is a pretty fantastic setup but the execution falters.
None of the puzzles surrounding the other characters – a kid, an old man, a
hunter, and a woman – are particularly challenging. It just takes a bit of
trial and error to see what you can change and how one change sort of dominoes
into changes for the other characters. The problem is that the pacing in the
game is pretty awful thanks to long load times and the fact the game makes you
re-play long sections over and over and over again. The gameplay isn’t
especially fun – it’s just a pretty basic third-person walking simulator,
really – so having to re-do sections is a drag.
Seeing the same things over and over, particularly June’s
death, largely robs the game of the emotional impact it worked so hard to get
in the introduction. I also have to say that if you’ve seen many other time
travel / time altering stories, particularly ones dealing with certain mature
subjects like Last Day of June does, it is all actually fairly predictable,
which I think also diminishes the emotional impact. It is still interesting to
see how everything plays out, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t pack quite the
punch the developers likely intended.
The presentation in Last Day of June is undeniably
impressive all around. The character designs have a distinct Tim Burton-esque
look (no eyes!) and the environments are nicely detailed and good-looking
overall. There is no spoken dialogue and the story is told through Simlish-like
gibberish and gestures, but it is surprisingly effective at letting you know
exactly what’s going on. The real star of the whole experience is definitely
the soundtrack, though, as it is just absolutely perfect.
All in all, Last Day of June is solid but stumbles in some
crucially important areas that steal away a lot of the story’s impact.
Repetition and load times ruin the pacing of the gameplay while predictability
and, again, repetition hinder the impact of the story. It does offer a fairly unique
experience, though, and for that reason it might be worth a look for walking
sim fans or folks looking for a more mature emotionally driven story. Maybe
wait for a sale, though, because even if you’re interested the $20 price tag is
perhaps a bit much for a 4-5 hour game without much replay value. I commend the
effort overall, but Last Day of June ultimately feels like one of those obvious
Oscar bait movies with weighty emotional themes but little substance that fail to move critics.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.
