State of Decay often shortchanges its survival sim DNA though, feeling very scripted or even offering no time to respond or roleplay. The game feels a little like zombie Oregon Trail. Many zombie lore conventions appear but State of Decay’s more interested in making you think about how to engage these conventions rather than trying to reinvent them. They aren’t all available one after the other but sort of randomly generate ever so often, notifying you by radio. What’s a little strange is how the game metes these out to you. So once you’ve geared up, you’ll often have several mission types to choose from, like a story mission or maybe training a newbie or helping them cope with stress by going out and committing zedicide. The Influence currency also affects what radio call ins you can use, which act like lifelines or killstreaks, where you can request survivors to come pick up resources you’ve found but don’t have room to carry back, request a vehicle or an airstrike, and other increasingly useful options as you progress. As the days turn over, the number of zombies increases and your Influence will reset to half of your Fame stat, which is earned by completing missions, helping survivors, and building facilities. Each resource you extract costs Influence and each item you place there adds to the grand total. You’ll withdraw these resources from your home base which starts off with a decent supply of stuff and any further outposts you build require a set amount of materials and influence to construct. Ok, technically the name of the game is State of Decay but like the underlying gameplay pressure is preparedne-y’know what, never mind :0īefore you go out on a supply run or a mission, you’ll want to make sure you’re outfitted with a melee weapon, a gun, and some number of healing and stamina restoring consumables. You’ll definitely need to treat these folks with care because they aren’t immediately replaceable, as the game metes out new recruits very sparingly. Now if any of your survivors die, they’re gone for good. I’m always a big fan of party systems like in a good ole Bioware RPG and while the AI can get stuck on things, fail to follow you, or provide very poor backup from time to time, they’re generally pretty nice to have around and can at least provide a distraction if nothing else. My favorite aspect of the survivors is the ability to enlist one at a time to accompany you indefinitely. If their morale gets too low, they can even snap, harming other survivors or leaving your community entirely. You’ll often need to switch off because characters become tired from their time abroad and their health and stamina start to cap at lower and lower thresholds, kind of like how your health bar decreases after each death in Dark Souls 2. You can switch between any character in your group and each have their own skill sets, like being to shoot more accurately or able to loot with a less likely chance of making racket and attracting zombies. The voice acting’s fine I guess but there aren’t so much characters as archetypes and that’s because State of Decay’s a lot more interested in solving the persistent day to day problems of a zombie outbreak than worrying about character drama. You’ll soon run into Maya Torres of the great melee skills and tight yoga pants and then some other fairly generic survivors as well. The game world is set in Trumbull Valley and you begin your post apocalyptic life as Marcus Campbell, a gloriously afroed jack of all trades. State of Decay’s story and characters feel like if the Walking Dead were populated by the Sims, just edgeless normies constantly in need of your attention and care. So let’s get stuck in like a crowbar in a zombie skull! But since both State of Decay 1 and 2 are on Gamepass right now, I thought it’d be interesting to revisit the first game almost a decade later and see how it’s aged, if I feel any differently about it, and whether the sequel is a marked improvement or just more of the same. I found the game’s hook fun enough, but found it far too easy to just force of will my way through the game without paying much attention to its simulation aspects. My friends and I were ecstatic to jump in headfirst. Zombies were everywhere but none had tried to do specifically what Undead Labs proposed in State of Decay: an open world sandbox with survival elements like permadeath and resource management. Zombie media had overtaken the public zeitgeist after the events of 9/11 through games like Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Dead Rising, the zombie modes in Call of Duty and even the Undead Nightmare DLC for Red Dead Redemption. I remember State of Decay being a big deal back in 2013, coming in on the last leg of the Xbox 360’s lifespan as a console exclusive Xbox Live Arcade game.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |