Borrowing elements from other games and paying homage to titles from the past is quite common. But a clone of The Last Of Us that appeared on the Nintendo eShop last week and is somehow still there, that’s a bit too far. The Last Hope – Dead Zone Survival is clearly more than just inspired by Naughty Dog’s critically acclaimed PlayStation exclusive, and its appearance on the Switch has garnered a lot of attention.
You need look no further than the artwork for The Last Hope to see. VG Games simply tried to make a very bad, very unofficial version of The Last Of Us for the Nintendo Switch. So much so that if the girl in the picture turned around, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ellie’s face. The creators of Last Hope no longer used the names Joel and Ellie, instead simply referring to their equivalent Ellie as “the girl”.
“A trip to the library to protect an innocent girl from reckless zombies,” reads the eShop description, and no, that’s not a typo, it really does read safe instead of save. The description also tells how great his story is. I mean, if it rips off the exact same story that was told in The Last Of Us Part 1, then that part is technically true. However, at £0.99 I get the feeling that The Last Hope doesn’t offer its players the same experience as The Last Of Us.
Again, the most surprising thing about all of this is that The Last Hope is still available for purchase. Not only has it been available on the eShop for a few days at this point, but it’s gotten a lot of attention on social media. I’d say none of that attention has been good since almost everyone is making fun of the Naughty Dog clone, but any attention is good attention for a game like this. The more people who buy the game out of curiosity before it’s inevitably removed, the better for its developers.
While it’s somewhat surprising that The Last Hope made it to the eShop at all, it’s certainly not an isolated incident. Left 4 Dead fans briefly thought their prayers had been answered last year when the series seemed to receive a mobile version out of nowhere. However, a quick look at the gameplay footage revealed that it was a copy that didn’t have any zombies at all.
The Last Hope is not The Last Of Us and unfortunately it will probably be a while before we get anything new from the series. Its multiplayer seems to be in trouble, Naughty Dog won’t say anything about a 3rd installment, and the second season of its adaptation is probably at least two years away.