E3 ’08 had its fair share of excitement, but under the piles of spin and surprises emerged a previously unknown gem of a game from Sony Japan. The Last Guy’s debut did exactly what was necessary -- get people, including the press, talking -- and only two months later, the game was released on the Playstation Network. The game’s short gestation period is little cause for worry, as its fresh take on a familiar game mechanic and difficulty that wavers between challenging and frustrating makes it a worthy addition to any PS3’s hard drive.

In The Last Guy, a strange purple ray has turned much of the world’s population into one of several types of zombies, and those lucky enough to be indoors during the event are now trapped in whatever building they were last in. It’s up to the player to globe hop from city to city and wrangle these scared citizens to designated rescue zones where they can be rescued. The player character, the Last Guy himself, is a zombie as well, according to the Playstation.Blog, and has traveled down from the Himalayan mountains to be humanity’s savior.

Each of the game’s 15 stages are set in real-world cities, constructed atop Google Maps images of cities like San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Tokyo, and populated with trapped citizens and an array of different zombies. As the player zooms around town, utilizing a number of special powers like extra speed, infrared vision, and invisibility, the Last Guy’s presence brings people out onto the streets; by simply running through a crowd or standing outside a building exit, the player collects people into a long train.

Like the timeless game Snake, the train will follow the character around the map, but using the train to surround a large crowd or packed building instantly adds the encircled company to your train. Managing a long train can be taxing: should a zombie manage to touch a part of it, the survivors in line behind the attack will scatter like ants without a queue to follow. Holding the Circle button will pull the train into a more compact line, but use is restricted by frustratingly limited stamina bar that is depleted also by sprinting around the map. Amassing a long train rewards the player with a larger stamina bar, useful in some of the later stages, and bringing it to safety awards the player with a higher score.

Using satellite imagery of real locations adds a nice touch to what amounts to a glorified game of Snake, but the problems lie in the details. The developers chose to add in a number of alleyways, nooks, and crannies, and then block off many of the more obvious-looking passageways. Without frequent use of the Last Guy’s infrared vision, which shows survivors in bright green and impassable terrain in black, it can be difficult to work your train out of a tight spot. Most of the game’s zombies, however, are invisible in infrared, so this frustrating necessity required some finesse to use properly.