Quarantine Zone: The Last Check Review

Ever felt that you’d be perfect to manage a survivor camp in a zombie apocalypse? If the answer was “yes” then good news! Quarantine Zone: The Last Check has now officially landed on PC via Steam and the Microsoft store, and it’s also hit PC Game Pass on day one – making it a little easier to get your hands on.

Thanks to the folks at Brigada Games and Devolver Digital, I’ve been taking a look into what has gone into Quarantine Zone, to bring you our extended written review and common-sense parent’s guide, too!

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The Basics – What is Quarantine Zone: The Last Check About?

In Quarantine Zone: The Last Check you’ll be in charge of a Papers-Please style inspection of incoming survivors and infected during a zombie apocalypse. You’ll need to closely examine each subject against a growing list of symptoms, deciding if they can pass through to survivors’ quarters, or if they need to be quarantined for further observation.

Of course, you’ll also have to process the already infected, sending them to “Liquidation” to ensure the pandemic doesn’t spread to your own camp.

This was what I expected going in, but Quarantine Zone: The Last Check has actually worked hard to add to this as well. In addition to processing with a growing variety of tools, you’ll also have base management tasks and defence to complete as well.

For base management, you’ll upgrade, restock and evacuate the camp, making sure survivors are all healthy and happy while they’re in your care. In addition to ensuring you don’t pass infected into the camp, this also includes things like making sure there’s enough food and medicine available, as well as keeping the generator running, too.

From time to time you’ll also need to get to grips with drone controls, as you mow down hordes of infected to stop them from overwhelming the camp altogether. Lastly, you’ll need to keep up with science, investigating new symptoms to add to your expanding list.

All of these elements come with their own upgrades and costs, using money and science resources that you’ll receive from day-to-day operations and survivor evacuation to either military or science camps.

Is Quarantine Zone: The Last Check Safe for Kids?

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is rated by PEGI at 18 and above, and by the ESRB as a Mature 17+. These ratings are based on Intense Violence, Blood, Drug References, and Bad Language.

At first, there’s not too much in the game which I would be worried about, but as you progress through the game, picking up new tools and new things to watch out for, things do get a little dicey.

From the very beginning, you’ll have to send “infected” survivors into what the game describes as “Liquidation” but really means “death by firing squad”. Although this isn’t too gory, the context is obviously a little disturbing, and this does come with body bags stacked high.

As you progress you’ll unlock the need to perform “science” (which will include extracting organs from live human subjects) as well as keeping caged zombies (and feeding them corpses from the Liquidation area).

Graphically, there’s not loads which is visually intense, but there is blood and there are significant contextual elements which I’d not be happy with our Micro-Bandits playing, so we’re keeping this one to Adults Only.

The Run Down

Our Five-Point Quality Check for Quarantine Zone: The Last Check

Gameplay – 4: I’ve been excited for this one for some time, and hoping that it would fill a Papers Please sized gap in my more chill gaming library. I’ve been happy to find that in addition to what I was expecting, base management, investigations and science provide additional gameplay variety and while there are niggles I’ve had a good time with Quarantine Zone overall.

Visuals – 3: This one suffers from the usual Unreal Engine drawbacks at this scale. Clipping issues, repetitive models and animations and rough edges abound, so go into it expecting The Usual™. There are also some minor things like getting knocked back by NPCs but nothing overall that detracts enough to push it into “bad” territory.

Audio – 2: While the voice acting for narration is decent, and sound effects are good overall, things get quite repetitive very quickly in Quarantine Zone. The same voice lines and the same zombie sounds can be a little bit annoying, making Audio the weakest area of the game.

Narrative – 3: There is a narrative here which gives decent progression and introduces you to the features and functions of the game. It can sometimes be relatively slow pace but it works well enough, and was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be before I headed into the game.

Replay – 4: There’s a good variety of gameplay here to keep things fun, and there’s an Endless mode you can jump into from the start which adds a great amount of replayability. I’d have liked more variety in survivors here and the already-repetitive audio doesn’t help, but it’s good overall.

The Verdict

Is Quarantine Zone: The Last Check Worth Grabbing?

Overall, our Pixel Bandits’ Cranberries score for Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is a decent 7 / 10.

This one feels exactly how I expected it to as I went in. It has the exact Unreal Engine rough edges you’d expect from a title at this scale, but for me this is made up for with a good variety of tools and gameplay.

I came in expecting the usual Papers Please style checkpoint system, but was surprised to find base management, science experiments and even drone-shooter segments to really help keep up gameplay variety in a meaningful way.

While a little more polish and some faster progression would have been nice, at this price point it’s one which will offer a good amount of fun for fans of the genre, with Endless mode meaning that it can continue for as long as you’re having fun.

As ever, to provide our Pixel Bandits review and common-sense parent’s guide for Quarantine Zone: The Last Check we received a game code from the folks at Devolver Digital