There have been many zombie games over the years: Dying Light, Left 4 dead, Dead Island etc… But none of them asked what it would be like if you were a staff member at a quarantine zone. Quarantine Zone: The last check puts players in charge of a quarantine zone. Players can decide who is safe and who is infected. Those who are infected must be eliminated as there is no cure for the virus. It was recently released on Xbox on July 15th 2026. The Version I am reviewing is the one on PC through Xbox Game pass as it kept crashing on the Xbox.
The player has to fulfil the quota for evacuation of survivors to get the good ending. Showing players how people turn into zombies and what symptoms to look out for is unique among zombies games, but the game becomes repetitive after a while.
Tools of the Trade
Quarantine Zone provides players with several tools to uncover signs of infection. The first is the thermometer which measures heart rate and temperature. Then there is the stethoscope to listen to survivors breathing. The scanner lets you look for hidden symptoms under clothing whilst the X-Ray lets you see people’s organs. You also get a gun and as you see obvious signs of infection (Like red eyes) you do feel tempted to shoot rather than send them to liquidation.
As you play the campaign, you are rewarded with these new tools which helps to keep gameplay fresh. Looking out for new symptoms of the virus provides a challenge for the player. Sadly in the endgame with no new tools, you will be used to finding all the symptoms. This makes the game very repetitive and doesn’t give the player a reason to keep playing after the end of the campaign.
Symptoms of Infection
Symptoms themselves have three different categories. The first is safe (such as yellow eyes or bruises), sick or infected symptoms (such as pale skin or red bruises) and infected (such as green skin and red eyes). People who you know are safe need to go to the survivors block. People who you think may be infected should go to quarantine and people who are infected need to be sent to liquidation.
This mechanic can be fun as keeps you guessing if you got it right or if you doomed survivors to be killed. It’s annoying at first when you kill civilians accidentally, but the game is forgiving with mistakes. You can still fulfil the quota for evacuation even with a few infected who got in the survivors block.
You can also upgrade your equipment with research points which are earned if you do a good inspection. The upgrades are nice to have and make the game easier but are not essential. They can range from colour codes in green, yellow or red depending on the symptom found and allowing your scanner to see through dirt and blood. I forgot about the upgrades during the first few hours but still managed to fuflil the quota. Overall, I wish the upgrades had more of an impact on the game and were something that you needed to get in order to get the good ending. This would also make research points more valuable.
Yeah Science!
Sometimes, you’ll see something that you haven’t seen before. That might mean you have found a new symptom. Any new symptoms means you must send that person to the lab and extract one of their organs highlighted in green. If you make no mistakes then you are rewarded with extra research points. If you find all symptoms in the chain you get a lot of research points. The lab minigam mixes up gameplay and makes you feel like a true scientist when you find something new.
You are also in charge of the base and have to use the money gained by eliminating infected and evacuating survivors to upgrade buildings. Each new set of upgrades is locked behind zones which have to be unlocked using research points. Some of the upgrades don’t feel like they have much of an impact however other than upgrading quarantine capacity and tent capacity. This does make you feel like you are the only person who actually does anything in the base however as the other characters mostly stand around.
In between days, the alarm will sometimes go off and you’ll need to defend the base. You’ll do this using a drone, which can shoot, use rockets, send bombs and call in an airstrike. Personally, I don’t like the way it was implemented. You can only see a black and white dot and it feels like a quick minigame that they made to try and break up gameplay. I believe the player should have been defending the base with others soldiers in first person instead. The game already does have some zombies who break inside so why didn’t the developers just add in a horde for us to shoot in first person?
Summary
Overall, Quarantine Zone: The last check is a fun game that tries to do something different with the zombie genre. But the repetitive end game and the pointless drone shooting minigame do unfortunately let it down. The NPC’s should also try to help like eliminating zombies fo example as they don’t do anything during the game. It’s not a bad game and is worth it at it’s price of £16.99 for the standard edition. It just needs improvement in some areas.
