The Last Straw

The Last Straw (also known as LS,TLS or simply Last Straw) is an open world stealth game developed by Konami's Team Syn and Beheseda Softworks. The game follows the story of Lionel Skye, an atheist detective from New York City who, after becoming the host to a demonic Symboite who calls itself LXY suddenly becomes a vital part in the chaotic plot of a twisted religious organization simply known as Syn. It will be released for Playstation 3 and Playstation 4 on October 25th. It will be released for the XBox 360 and the XBox One on November 1st. It was rated T for T by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) for Alcohol Reference, Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Tobacco Reference and Sexual Content. It was rated PEGI-16 by Pan European Game Information (PEGI) for Violence, Bad Language and Sex.

Box Art
The box art for the Last Straw varies greatly from console to console and from country to country. All four of the differing boxarts depict a piece of abstract art on the front cover, the Playstation cover depicting a black, white and blue cityscape sort of object. The XBox 360 front cover boxart depicts a wheel of colors that has been stylized to look like it has been drawn in crayon. The title fonts also differ quite a bit, the North American Playstation font done in a childlike fashion and the European Playstaion font done in more of a noir style. The XBox 360 title font is done in a crayon-like font to match the front box art. The European Playstation cover art also shows the game's tagline, "Beaten. Bloodied. Dead."

The back cover art is completely different for every type of boxart. The North American Playstation back cover art depicts the main character Lionel Skye from the neckdown along with three demonic and angelic characters from the game. The back cover art for the European Playstation depicts an old and abandoned mansion, one of the main locations in the game. Below the image it reads the words "This is the End" in the noir style font. The North American XBox 360 back cover art was designed to overwhelm the player, at the top showing an abstract piece of art depicting it a brain with an eerie Stephen King quote pasted upon it in the crayon font and at the bottom showing several optical illusions and bizarre pieces of art: The back cover art for the European XBox 360 shows an abstract piece of art depicting main character Lionel Skye with yet another spooky Stephen King quote scrawled upon it.
 * A woman's face with a city inside of it
 * A human eye with a small hand poking out
 * A still picture that "moves"
 * An old couple made of various food products

Introductory Cutscene
The game begins with a short cutscene showing the key events at the beginning of the story. It all starts in a small New York Apartment, where Detective Lionel Skye is returning after a long day of work. The first thing you notice is the emptiness, large areas left without any sort of furniture and lots of cardboard boxes covering the floor. Luckily however, Lionel is not alone, his niece Miranda is sitting on a large folding bed texting on her phone. Lionel has a short conversation with the girl and soon pulls off his blue jacket and rolls up his sleeve, revealing a large, bloody and recently stitched up bullet wound. Lionel tells Miranda about his day for a few moments, however the scene quickly changes to a dark room with various symbols scrawled on the wall in chalk and a large table with a red table cloth taking up most of the space. There are various people sitting at the table, however it is too dark to make out faces. In whispered tones they talk to eachother, their words hard to make out. Finally however, the one at the end of the table stands up and reveals a large chest. They all let out a loud snicker and begin to speak to each other in a louder understandable tone, each of them with much different voices, each one more sinister than the last. They speak of their ancestors conquest of the third ring of hell and the one demon they took away in captivity. They then slice open a chest and a pool of blood-like liquid pours out of it, consuming most of the table cloth in seconds. Suddenly, the scene changes back to Lionel, seemingly a few hours after his last appearance. He tells Miranda that he is heading out to grab some dinner and meet up with a few friends. The teenage girl cannot hear him over the music on her phone, and so Lionel leaves and drives his old black car through the pouring rain. It soon shows him sitting and drinking with several of his buddies at a Strip Club, and soon he is already driving on his way home, a small bag with a hamburger for Miranda inside. When Lionel arrives home however, Miranda is missing, a large trail of blood leading from her bed.

Beginning
At the start of the game, you must travel through the city, following the trail of blood to find Miranda. Due to your Detective Badge hanging around your neck various gangsters attack you and you are put through a short tutorial on long range weapons which involves taking out several of the gangsters with your Glock 34. By the end of this tutorial you should have gained enough experience points to upgrade your gun using the Upgrade Screen. Soon you will find that the trail of blood has come to an end and you must ask the people around you what they have seen to locate where the trail continues. This then puts you through and investigation tutorial, which, at the end will lead to you having to use brute force (which also teaches you how to do hand-to-hand combat). You will have to battle many more gangsters and do a few more investigations (one which involves seducing a woman using the "Charm" skill) before you finally find the warehouse where Miranda has been held captive.

Meet the Butcher
Suddenly you hear the words "So...the host took the bait" in a demonic tone. Lionel looks around confused, and suddenly a beefy man with glowing red eyes and a nosebleed walks up to you, a butcher knife in hand. You must battle him, and soon discover bullets only do a small amount of damage to him. After defeating the boss a cutscene plays where you have the butcher pinned on the ground, and after chuckling in the demonic whispered tones the blood dripping from his nose suddenly comes out in an extremely large wave and shoves it self inside Lionel's nose.

Demon Mode
At this point the screen goes completely black for a few seconds. When the screen finally clears, you see a demonic creature standing where Lionel was above the butcher. The demon smiles evilly and turns to leave, however you suddenly hear Lionel yell "NOT YET" angrily. The demon growls but finally whispers "fine" and turns around, letting Miranda out of her chains. The demon whispers "if I put her to sleep I can make her forget what has happened." Miranda suddenly falls asleep and the demon carries her out the door chained to his back. At this point you go through a tutorial for "Demon Mode", teaching you how to use various demonic powers to destroy your enemies. In this mode you can harm civilians as well, however when you do Lionel will yell angrily. For the rest of the time that you are in demon mode your goal is simply to get back to your apartment.

At the Apartment
At this point a rather long cutscene begins to play. You begin by letting out an agonizing scream before mutating back into Lionel. He lays a sleeping Miranda down on her bed and then stomps over to his study, clutching his face in his hands, sweat running down his brow. Lionel then has the following conversation with the demon inside of his head: At this point the conversation ends and Lionel goes back to reality. This is the end of most of the comedy in the game.
 * Lionel: "Who...what are you?!"
 * Demon: "The host may call me LXY, the demon of the chest..."
 * Lionel: The man laughs. "Really, a demon? Thats what they told you that you were? Who the hell made you anyways?"
 * Demon: "My first lord's name does not translate into your tounge, however he means nothing to one such as I. All that matters to a symboite is it's host, you, Detective Skye..."
 * Lionel: "A symboite, huh? So essentially you're just an intelligent parasite?"
 * Demon: The demon is clearly angered by Lionel's comment. "If that is the wording the host chooses, yes, a parasite..."
 * Lionel: "Well, according to the web if you have a parasite you should do everything you can to get rid of it."
 * Demon: "I would not advise that of the host..."
 * Lionel: "Well you did assist with Miranda...hey, why in Hell did you do that anyways?"
 * Demon: He sighs. "A nonbeliever, yet the host continues to repeat the name of my domain. And I must please the host, otherwise the host may do something irrational and get the host killed. That would not be good for the host or I..."
 * Lionel: "Trust me kid, I think I can handle a measly parasite."
 * Demon:  "The host calls me a youth, yet I outlive the host by centuries. How ironic the host seems to be..."
 * Lionel: He chuckles. "I like you kid. Don't make a giant lump on my head and I think we just might work."
 * Demon: "What? The host is accepting...not of the regular humans. I must look into this. For now, I should release the host from my quarters."