Review: Final Exam

Developed by Mighty Rocket Studios and published by Focus Home Interactive, Final Exam is a cooperative 2.5D side-scrolling beat-’em-up.

Final Exam put players in the shoes of four playable characters: Brutal Joe, Nathan, Cassy and Sean. All four of them were on their way to a school alumni event until they encountered a horde of monsters. In order to survive, players would have to take up arms against the beasts and get to safety.

Players choose one of the combatants where each character has access to melee attacks, guns, and bombs to deal with the horde and variety between the four comes in the form of stats. Brutal Joe, for instance, is the “tankiest” of the bunch as he starts off with higher Life and Strength stats. Nathan, on the other hand, excels in Explosives, while Cassy is a jack of all trades, and Sean excels in gun combat. Each character also has a skill tree where players can choose to invest skill points in either the Specials, Passive, or Combat. While the Passive and Combat branches of the skill trees are identical for all players, the Specials are vastly different and the characters’ play style require players to invest their SP strategically.

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Combat in Final Exam is easily the best part of the game. Attacks feel powerful when connecting with enemies and the Combat skill tree provides a myriad of new abilities to dodge and kill with. Fallen monsters drop resources such as food, ammo, and explosives, all of which are essential for your survival. On top of that, players are able to find a variety of weapons which help to keep combat refreshing. For instance, players might want to swap out the faster hitting crowbar for a machete which while attacks slower, deals slightly higher damage and has a bleeding effect.

Combat also involves a robust combo system reminiscent of action games like Devil May Cry. As you attack monsters, you build up combo multipliers and scores, but you will lose them if you are hit. This is where the game give players a choice, to continue building up multipliers and score but risk losing it all or you can validate any existing score at the cost of resetting your combo meter. This therefore provides another dimension to the game’s combat which gives it more depth.

Level design in Final Exam is great too. Each stage is large and beautifully detailed and very atmospheric. While the game is not scary by any stretch of the imagination, the dark corridors does create a sense of foreboding. While it is fun to explore the beautifully created levels, the game does force players to explore the map in search of collectibles. I say that as this is the only way which players can earn Character Points (CP) which is required for improving the stats of your characters. Players are awarded a CP for finding all seven energy drinks and another CP for finding the two weapons scattered across any given level. While it is by no means hard to look for all nine collectibles, it does take away from the combat and mission objectives as my friend and I often find ourselves desperately searching for them before continuing on with the level.

To compliment the combat and level design, missions in Final Exam span the entire level with multiple objectives requiring players to do an assortment of tasks. The various tasks are similar to those found in any game requiring players to collect certain quest items or to escort and protect a NPC. While the objectives are not difficult to complete, monsters will attempt to hinder your progress which adds an element of difficulty especially when playing co-op or on a higher difficulty. And in a co-op game, there are different ways which players can go about completing the objectives. We tried a variety of ways where my friend would defend me from the monsters while I work on an objective or we would just go our separate ways and complete any available tasks assigned to us.

Unlike the combat or the level design, music in Final Exam does not stand out. Certain objectives are accompanied by some good pieces which helps build the tension, but whenever the player encounters a Pack (a horde of 20 or so monsters), the music will abruptly cut out only to pick up after the player eliminates the invading monsters. While it does not take away from the combat, it can’t help but feel that these Packs could be made a lot more exciting with some intense background music. On top of that, there is a distinct lack of music when a mission begins so my friend and I often find ourselves exploring the large levels with next to no music in the background.

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Final Exam is great fun even when playing alone, but the game truly shines when you are playing with friends. Players are able to roam about without being confined to the same screen and the game’s difficulty scales nicely with the amount of players in the game and players can either opt to stick together for survival or choose to split themselves up to quickly achieve mission objectives at the risk of dying. Joining a game is easy via the in-game lobby system but any private games with friends will require a manual invite via the Steam client.

One minor annoyance about Final Exam is that after every level, the game does not bring players back to the game lobby but the main menu instead. It does becomes a hassle especially with private games as you will have to recreate the game session every time.

Another issue with Final Exam is that when playing an online game, the game does not provide players with mission cutscenes or monster profiles which the local game does. This removes any context of the story and requires the player to replay missions via local games for the full experience.

All in all, Final Exam is a great cooperative experience with friends. The game spans eight large levels with a mandatory single player tutorial and features an excellent and robust combat system with some RPG elements.  Players will have to work with each other to complete the various mission objectives in order to survive and while the music could be better, the game is still great fun. Final Exam is an excellent title from Mighty Rocket Studios and definitely deserves your attention.

Final Exam is available on Steam, PSN and Xbox Live for $9.99.

2 copies of the game were provided for review purposes.