At some time, those who have played video games for long enough conjures up images of their dream game-that one idea most importantly others they desperately hope might someday launch. For me personally, that dream game is the best zombie adventure. While “zombie games are played out” continues to be a much-expressed sentiment, I keep longing for that certain project that'll satisfy me when it comes to survival, exploration, scavenging, and community building (should I get tired of going it alone).
I'd certainly never state that Undead Labs' 2013 release State of Decay was precisely what I've always wanted in my dream zombie game, but it did tick most of the same boxes. The sport dropped you into an open-world section of rural America, where getting a place to establish a base, searching abandoned shops and houses for supplies, and helping out other survivors in need of assistance were just as essential as getting roaming zombies hordes with a baseball bat, rifle, or the front-end of a car. All of that was part of a larger gameplay focus of seeing how long you are able to last (versus carving your way via a complex storyline), which has been always thought lent itself better to the zombie apocalypse scenario. Then, in addition, State of Decay delved into territory few previous games had tried to tackle, most notably its concepts of creating up a residential area, never having one central character, and the risk that-at any time-any (or all) of your group could die for good. Though I'd beefs with some of the things it did, I truly fell deeply in love with the game-especially being an concept that could (and hopefully would) be improved and expanded upon in future iterations.
Which, of course, leads us to State of Decay 2. I went into this sequel not only as a reviewer seeking to attempt to create a fair judgement on which Undead Labs have been working on over the last handful of years, but also like a fan wanting to find out if all that time would produce something that felt like a worthy growth of previous ideas.
The great news is when you enjoyed the initial like Used to do, State of Decay 2feels just like a more polished and expanded version of what we played before. In fact, sometimes, it's easy to think of this a lot more like a reimagining of the first State of Decay than an actual sequel. Before pointing out any singular change or upgrade being offered up here, the one statement I possibly could make that would sum up State of Decay 2 is that it has noticeably less jank. I do not think there's anyone available who wouldn't use “jank” in describing the initial, even though there definitely is still some present here, there is a noticeably higher level of quality to everything you'll encounter.
One area where this is quickly evident is combat. While fighting zombies previously featured some quantity of “mash buttons and hope things work out,” I not only felt like I was more in charge and had greater options for coping with any given situation here, however i was also using a lot more fun along the way. Your community's members certainly still feel more like average, people than action heroes, however their increased combat capabilities can lead to fewer situations where you'll proclaim a particular death or disadvantage as “cheap bulls**t.” (Let's be clear, though: You'll still absolutely be accusing the game of being that at times because of some of the ways you can yourself stuck around the environment or enemies, which inevitably happens at worst possible times.)
Though it doesn't affect gameplay nearly as much as the upgrades to combat do, I believe the improvements I most appreciate are those for your base. In State of Decay, my base felt like somewhere I went to fall off or pick up supplies-and that was it, really. It never seemed like there was much to determine or do when in your own home, and also the various optional expansion (as an infirmary or workshop) were always accessed through menus and never the physical areas themselves. While they still don't offer just as much function as I'd like to see, you'll now be interacting with these areas of your base directly, and there's better presentation in terms of them being used by your community members. One side effect of that-and building additions in general-is that the base can now also be a resource of noise for attracting the undead (together with previous factors such as fighting other zombies or honking car horns). It's a logical change that will make you believe longer and harder about what you build when, and that i really appreciated needing to consider that. Obviously, there's an increased quantity of depth with what kinds of services you can include to your base and what benefits they'll provide your people, combined with the capability to add mods that further customize their capabilities. Funny enough, the single biggest addition that helped me happy were the candles your survivors light once you've gotten properly settled right into a particular location. After cursing how dark our first base was for the initial couple of days, returning home to locate rooms lit inside a soft glow made it feel like people were actually living there and trying to create a tough situation just a little better.
Another seemingly small change ends up having a pretty profound impact on the way you approach the game: the necessity to refuel vehicles. Unlike the original where cars or trucks would run until you'd caused enough damage that they literally exploded, here they'll also turn off after they run out of gas. What initially appears like an extra step to bear in mind becomes a life-or-death situation because-like me-you'll eventually start taking this need for granted. Maybe it'll are available in the form of “I'll just find gas along the way,” or maybe “Eh, I have enough left within the tank to make it home.” And then, that fancy sports vehicle you're driving comes rolling to some stop like a horde of zombies descends upon it. Like the noise your base now makes, gas is an addition which makes life harder for players-but in a positive and satisfying way.
Of course, gleam quantity of “back of the box” type upgrades in State of Decay 2 that either enhance what we should had before or which offer something new. Your community's survivors can now focus on the various attributes (like Wits or Shooting) that every character has, and their individual personality trails (say, gardening) can offer benefits to your group or open up base upgrades that wouldn't be possible without them (like raising higher-yield crops inside a garden). And, unlike before, now you can assign someone as leader of your crew, versus just role-playing as though there's one. Depending on what type of leader they're, specific base additions and campaign missions is going to be available. Coping with other NPC survivor factions has expanded as well, as relationships can improve or worsen based on what you do to help (or hurt) them.
That, I guess, brings me to one of the two biggest things players will find new in State of Decay 2: co-op. The power for up to four friends (or strangers) to operate together in taking on the zombie apocalypse continues to be heavily hyped by Undead Labs, but I will be honest in stating that it is the least-exciting piece of the sport for me. I just don't care that much about co-op in games like these-and never once thought Let me see the mode added when playing with the first game. Now, having said that, time teaming up fellow EGM zombie slayer Michael Goroff was admittedly fun, as I helped him search for materials for his base while he aided within my desperate look for medicine. One of the greatest concerns relating to this feature has been that it only enables you to obtain a limited distance from the host player before snapping you to their whereabouts, however in practice, I did not really find that to be a serious concern. Sure, guest players can't just run all the way over the map by themselves, but the allowed radius is very large enough that you simply shouldn't sense hampered by the boundaries.
Finally, State of Decay 2's headlining, love-them-or-hate-them stars would be the plague zombies. Scattered throughout whichever from the game's three maps you decide to inhabit are giant, pulsating “hearts” that turn normal zombies into far deadlier plague zombies. Unlike your family foes, plague zombies can infect you through prolonged contact and bites, and if the plague accumulates too much in a particular character, a timer will literally count down just how much longer they have to live. At that point, you'll need to either administer the plague antidote, keep them inside your infirmary until you can, or place them out of their misery before they turn. I'm now likely to contradict myself by saying that I bothlove and hate them. Around the upside, they offer a very interesting escalation of threat that, honestly, all zombies in the game could offer. On the other hand, they don't have as much of an effect as you might hope, and once you've taken out a handful of plague hearts, the excitement can begin to put on off.
I guess that leads me into the bad of State of Decay 2: It seems like a more polished and expanded version of what we played before. No, that isn't a mistake-the exact same sentiment is both success and failure of what Undead Labs has given us here.
The harsh the truth is that, having gone back to replay the original again for any number of hours before jumping into State of Decay 2, I couldn't shake the feeling which i was playing a new expansion to State of Decay with a fresh menu system. Get into the rhythm from the standard gameplay loop-explore new areas, search for supplies, develop my base more, remove some zombie threats-and the familiarity can sometimes be overwhelming. One example of how this hits especially hard happens when it sunk for the reason that a lot of the buildings I was exploring were built upon the exact same structural models that were utilized in the original game. I had been finding the same houses, the same bars, the same fast food joints, exactly the same clinics, exactly the same garages. It seems like there is a definite rise in the amount of buildings and structures you are able to enter overall-which I definitely appreciate-but seeing places I'd long understand pretty disappointing.
More than that for me, however, would be a bigger insufficient a sense of forward progression. As i know a decent amount of this disappointment comes from my being a fan of the original game and having a lot of personal wants its sequel, another cause was something Undead Labs itself created: State of Decay: Lifeline. Following the first game and its initial expansion Breakdown set the tone and degree of expectation for which players would be getting, Lifeline (the 2nd and final DLC) arrived and shook all of that up. Instead of being in a countryside sparse with civilization, we found ourselves downtown inside a major city. While before there was more focus on shallower dynamic storytelling events, suddenly we'd a deeper narrative there when you wanted it. Lifeline felt like a tease from the bigger ambitions the team may have having a better quality budget and deeper development experience under its belts, and that was incredibly exciting in my experience.
And yet, State of Decay 2 came to remind me of recent-era Apple and their handling of macOS. As someone who's used their computers since the Mac Plus, I have been frustrated as it is increasingly felt such as the company is concerned more with OS additions which make permanently marketing bullet points while core features stagnate or improve limited to a snail's pace. As nice as such things as plague zombies or co-op are, If only we could have gotten more quality of life improvement to bolster the game in the bottom up.
For example, on offer the choice of three very sizable maps sounds great in writing, but the 3 of these return us to that “out in the country” scenario with only minimal differences in the environment. I'm tired of spacious surroundings-give me instead one denser, more complex city map that shakes in the gameplay in fresh ways. Or, take the deeper relationships that we were promised. When you start the sport, you're because of the choice of four character pairs to initially play as. I picked an on-again-off-again couple, and throughout the tutorial, the happy couple bickered about how to survive, just how long they'd actually been broken up, and just what to complete next. It made for some great moments of personality between the two-but when I got to the game proper, that mostly disappeared. An occasional random line would pop up that had the two talking, but there were hardly any indications of them having any deeper connection than any of the other characters had. Then, I acquired one of the women killed in a moment of overconfidence, and from her ex-girlfriend came-nothing. A brief history that selection screen discussed, the relationship I saw flashes of throughout the tutorial, it had been now gone with little greater than a shrug. And, if you are hoping to be able to build up relationships with the other survivors you meet on the way past that initial duo, you'll still only get two main options 95% of times when conversing to them: recruit them to tag together with you, or switch control for them. Of everything that Undead Labs has build within the State of Decay series, there is nothing making it stay ahead of anything else out there more than its community aspect. I am not asking for The Sims 4 -levels of relationships and emotional expression-in part because even that game doesn't go far enough-but there's just so, so much untapped potential for making something really special. (That increased human element is especially necessary for a game like State of Decay 2 given there's so little structured storyline to speak of.)
There's also a number of smaller things that the dev team could really improve for a better overall experience. The sport can really be bad sometimes at explaining what's happening and why, with things like stamina and health penalties sometimes being far too cryptic. It does not help that the game may also be bad at conveying what's going on. For example, directly telling characters to relax in bed is an important part of having them recover faster, however when I did that, Irrrve never actually saw the smoothness resting-which at first made me believe that choosing that option didn't have real meaning beyond swapping control to a person else. There's also numerous intricacies that may occur, from areas of environmental surroundings simply refusing to load, to character models as well as your flashlight's beam distorting in some freakish ways when participating in multiplayer, to framerate drops if you're inhabiting certain bases when zombie hordes appear, to zombies literally falling out of the sky when they load in to the game. Remember that I was playing a pre-release build from the game, so I'm sure a few of these things will be fixed in the initial few patches that hit. But, you know-it just would not be State of Decay without that jank I talked about before, so I won't be bothered if they aren't.
When trying to condense all that into a singular opinion about how good or bad State of Decay 2 is, there are 2 stuff that come to my thoughts. First is that, in the past, I had been trained to review the game that you simply got, not the sport that you desired to get. Another is the fact that, when i talked about in my Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice review, the video game industry has witnessed an extreme decrease in the number of mid-tier games that exist between indies and triple-A projects-and it's nice to determine games such as this that still attempt to fill that hole.
In sweeping aside everything that I wish State of Decay 2 was, and focusing solely on which it is, I can not help but possess a deep appreciate for it and Undead Labs' efforts. Given how engrossed I acquired in to the first game despite its faults, obtaining a better form of that experience with a few new additions, fresh assumes previous elements, along with a change of scenery can actually be enough to satisfy me on a certain level. And yet, I can't ignore the proven fact that this doesn't really feel like five years of progression, even when remembering it isn't something that's trying to directly contend with the big boys. New players who crave some zombie-slaying satisfaction must have a lot of fun, longtime fans will probably get sucked in again while appreciating the advance, but both may very well end up where I do-unable to stop looking toward the horizon, wondering how life may be better in the next city in the future.
