I went into "The Last Worker" (open in new tab) expecting some kind of deeply political, important game with a capital "I". A bold artistic statement like "Disco Elysium" or "Norco". Worst of all: the preachy polemics about "late capitalism" that people post all the time. What I found instead was a forbidding third. It's a refreshingly engaging caper with a broad anti-corporate theme, anchored by stealth and puzzle-solving gameplay centered around a hovercraft with six degrees of freedom.

The Last Worker is a fun, short, narrative puzzle game that I am always happy to play, but it is not a paragon of the genre. You play the role of Kurt, a 25-year veteran of the Amazon-like Jüngle Corporation who, through bureaucratic supervision, has survived a wave of cutbacks due to automation and is literally the last human worker to sort packages in a Manhattan-sized fulfillment center. Note: The game is marketed as fully playable in and out of VR, and I only had the opportunity to review the flat-panel version prior to its release.

This sorting of packages is one of the two main gameplay loops in The Last Worker. Using a compass projected from the cart's hovercraft, it must fly through the facility to the next package, check it for damage, weight discrepancies, or other errors, and deliver it to either the "recycling" or "fulfillment chute" accordingly. This mechanic has the "gotcha" trolling ability of a Papers, Please locality: "You thought this box was fine because it wasn't damaged and the weight was just right. You forgot to check the size."

This is a really fun setup, but I don't think its full potential will be realized during game run time. The basic concepts are introduced and as you progress, variables and complexities are added, but you never reach a satisfying climax where everything you have learned is demonstrated. Similarly, I never felt threatened by the quota. The "last worker" could have used the difficulty slider to shorten the given time or increase the amount of curveballs.

There were two sequences that required balancing secondary goals while completing the basic rounds, and these felt really juicy. The composition of achieving the activist's goals within the time limit of the shift while not dropping the company's metrics for a moment led to a frantic, sweaty, and memorable gameplay experience. As it stands, the only way to get a taste of that in The Last Worker is to get a glimpse of the unique puzzle-solving potential of time limits: it's fairly easy to sabotage three robots, while it's virtually a challenge not to produce a perfect Jungle score at any given moment.

The other main gameplay pillar of The Last Worker, arcade-like stealth in the back rooms of the fulfillment center, better realizes the potential of the concept: Jüngle's patrol bots have a clear line of sight, and are able to see clearly and follow a well-defined patrol route, which is a good thing, as they are able to see the enemy's movements and not just their own. It never deviates from its defined patrol route, making stealth entirely a matter of observation and timing. The Last Worker mixes in added challenges and sub-objectives, with one impressive sequence requiring the completion of two hacking puzzles at opposite ends of the patrol route within a time limit.

My major complaint about stealth is that I wish the verticality of the hovercraft had been better utilized. The warehouse work part, in which players jump up and down through massive piles of boxes to find packages, makes good use of the six degrees of freedom. Each level has a set piece that descends through the silos while avoiding the bots' patrol routes. This bit was a testament to the potential of space hovercraft sneaking, but sadly it was a one-time event.

Spoiler alert: "The Last Worker," like "BioShock Infinite," is a bit like "BioShock Infinite" in that the rebels are actually a bunch of greedy assholes, and both sides are bad. How disappointing that is may be up to the individual (I wasn't happy), but overall the game's story and characters are fun and a good hang-up. More straightforward than expected: The Last Worker may be a little too eager to explain its jokes. In one scene, a character scoffs, "How can Mr. Jungle not be progressive, he has rainbow hair. Thanks, but I kind of figured it out just by looking at that hair.

[3] It's great to see Jason Isaacs as your little robot pal, but every time I hear him speak it reminds me of his portrayal of Soviet General Zhukov (opens in new tab) in "The Death of Stalin." Almost everything is a Simpsons-style pun or visual gag, my favorite being the "Grizzly Man Action Figure" of the diminutive Werner Herzog holding a small bear. [The Last Worker] is reasonably priced at $20, and it would be nice to see more games like this. Ultimately, however, it doesn't have the exuberance of, say, last year's excellent "Scorn" (open in new tab), and it doesn't have the poignancy of similarly overtly political games like "Disco Elysium," "Norco," "Night in the Woods," etc.

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