Last Defenders is, at face value, just a lazy bit of shovelware from DIG/Diego, a top down twin stick shooter with some laughable, garbage, Flash tier pixelcrap sprites. But really, this was designed by Diego as an attempt to harvest Steam gamers personal email addresses. There's absolutely no reason for the developer of a single player Steam game to ask for your email address or require it just so you can play the game. Well, no legitimate reason. Plenty of shady ones.
DIG Games have a known history of trying to scam people into paying them money for someone else's work, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. One example of DIG Games doing this is [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1022040]Candy Mandy[/url], which is really the "[url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/systems/match-3-jelly-garden-kit-43260]Match 3 Jelly Garden Kit[/url]" asset, written by the actual developers, Candy Smith.
Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The developers appear to be involved in suspicious data harvesting as they eschew SteamWorks (because SteamWorks does not facilitate privacy invasion in the ways the developers prefer) in favour of demanding users hand over their email address and other private, personal details. Presumably this is so they can profile you, collect data on you, combine that data with other sources and sell your private information off to the highest bidder (and, in fact, anyone else who is willing to pay for it). That's reprehensible and must not be tolerated. I'm sure they'll swear black and blue they don't, so "just trust them", but I wouldn't trust these shady developers as far as I could throw them. An ethical developer would use SteamWorks. Stay safe out there.
These flaws make this game fall far short of the professional standards we expect from a modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH.
The only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 130 million gamers on Steam and well over 140,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
This game requires that you install the third party software, "Playfab", along with creating whatever account is required (and of course handing over whatever personal details etc to that third party). There is ZERO justification for this as Steam handles everything the game needs without this, this is just a consumer hostile move by a less than trustworthy developer. Gamers should be warned about this because it's completely understandable to want to avoid this product for that reason alone.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam?
Last Defenders is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. The quality problems and defects with this game makes the asking price totally unrealistic. It is impossible to recommend this to gamers here on Steam. Remember that if you buy a game from an unethical developer, you're putting your money at risk.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
