When I was a kid, capture the flag was one of my favorite games to play with friends. Whether it was while camping, where we hid t-shirts as flags, doing a “real” game of it in Boy Scouts with actual flags, or playing it during paintball matches in high school, it was always a part of my youth. And while many games, primarily first-person shooters, have their own take on it, I’ve never found a game that tried to bring me that true capture the flag feeling. Last Flag is the closest a game has come to doing that.
Developed and published by Night Street Games, Last Flag is one created and built out of a passion for the children’s game. In a unique twist, it comes from brothers Mac Reynolds and Dan Reynolds. Yes, that Dan Reynolds, the lead singer of Imagine Dragons.
But is the game worth getting invested in, even at an affordable price point?
Last Flag Review — What’s in a game?
Last Flag’s premise is simple. It’s a hero shooter where you play capture the flag that’s presented as a televised broadcast. But just because it sounds simple, that doesn’t mean there’s not a bit more to it.
At the start, teams have 60 seconds to hide their flag anywhere on their side of the map. While one player hides the flag, the rest are tasked with destroying Cash Bots that give you money used to upgrade your character’s abilities. All the cash is shared amongst the team, so you don’t have to fight over who destroys the bots.
Once the flags are hidden and the game begins, you have to find the flag while taking control of the map. There are three radar towers on the left, center, and right sides of the map. Capturing those radar towers not only helps you heal if you’re next to them, but even helps you find your opponent’s flag.
As you control a tower, the radar will ping quadrants of the map and show you if a flag is in that area or not. It’s a brilliant touch to add to that sense of urgency to make sure you control the tower in the area of the map where your flag is hidden.
Once you capture the opposing team’s flag, you have just over a minute to defend your base to claim victory. Again, it’s pretty straightforward.
The heroes you’ll come to love…or hate
As mentioned, the Last Flag is a hero shooter. At launch, there are nine characters to choose from, each with their own unique look and abilities.
The gameplay and fighting aren’t anything to write home about, but it does its job well. Using ranged weapons requires precise aiming to really make an impact, leading to a nice skill gap among players. For malee characters, you can find some success simply mashing away, but to really do well with characters like Knives and Lumberjack, you’ll need to strike at the right time to take out enemies.
The time-to-kill is pretty quick, but that’s something I like. I’m sure it’ll be tweaked in future updates, but I’d much rather have a shorter kill time than have every character be a bullet sponge.
As with any hero-based game, some characters feel overpowered while others feel absolutely pointless.
For the overpowered ones, I feel Scout and Arsenal are the two you always see at the top of the leaderboard. Arsenal can be a one-person team most games with a turret, healing station, and a grenade tornado all at her disposal. Then there’s Scout, who is perfect for searching for the flag. He can cover large areas in quick fashion with his Falcon. And, if you have any sort of decent aim, his rifle can pick off opponents at a distance.
On the flip side, Roadie might be the worst of all the heroes. He fires his grenades far too slowly to make any sort of impact, and his abilities are almost useless if you aren’t in a group fight.
More heroes are coming, and balancing updates are on the way, so I’d anticipate my thoughts on characters to change as time goes on.
One thing regarding heroes I really appreciate it is the fact that if you swap your hero after you die, any ability upgrades you’ve made carry over to the new character. It’s forgiving in that sense, as you don’t have to worry about having a weaker character as the match progresses.
Is it enough to keep you?
While I’ve enjoyed, and still am, my time playing Last Flag, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about some of the biggest concerns I have.
Movement feels a bit floaty, and there’s this weird full momentum stop thing that happens when using abilities. It’s hard to really explain it, but as you play, you’ll quickly see what I’m talking about. Animations can also feel janky, which takes you away from any immersion in the game show aesthetic it’s going for. You want players to smoothly move and fight, and Last Flag struggles with that at times.
With only nine heroes and two maps at launch, the game feels like something that many players will enjoy for a few days of gaming before getting the feeling that they’ve seen and done everything. After all, once you play the same maps a dozen times, you’ll quickly figure out the best hiding spots and the best places to look when searching for a flag. I actually found my games ending sooner and sooner the more I played.
Finally, this game is so much better when you team up with friends. There are lobbies and quick matches, but when you join a game, and no one wants to talk or PTFO, it can really ruin the whole experience.
Last Flag Review Verdict
Last Flag is a fun take on capture the flag that really does take it back to the true nature of the game. I’ve had fun in my matches, especially when playing with a group of friends. The radar towers add a nice strategy to how you hide the flag and play, and the big team fights are both chaotic and entertaining.
There are issues that need to be addressed, but the game does what it needs to do. And at $15 for a game with no microtransactions, no pay-to-win mechanics, and new content already in development, Last Flag is a title I’d recommend picking up.
Are you going to check out Last Flag? Leave your thoughts on the game in the comments down below, and in join the discussion in the official Insider Gaming Discord.
Last Flag
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Last Flag
Mike has been covering the gaming industry since 2012, and has reported on some of the largest events in the industry while also working as an investigative reporter. Outside of…
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