I’m not big on open world games.
I’ve said it many, many times on the Geekscape Games Podcast (as well as in my written work over the past six years), but it takes a truly special open world experience to hold my interest and to keep me motivated through the vast quantity of hours required to realize all that these gigantic worlds have to offer.
Very few games in the genre have gripped me over the years; Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto 5, The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are the only really memorable titles that come to mind (and it’s a little tough to compare a series like State of Decay to some of the games in that list). Typically I’ll play through the opening missions or until the game really opens up before I get bored or overwhelmed, and simply… never play the game again.
I had a brief affair with the first State of Decay shortly after the Year One Survival Edition released for Xbox One. I played the game for somewhere between seven and ten hours, and thoroughly enjoyed much of my (albeit short) time with it. I quickly became invested in the storyline for Marcus, who returned from a weekend fishing trip to find out that the world had ended and that the undead had taken over. I jumped in and out of State of Decay here and there, and while I enjoyed the aspect of needing to ensure that your small (but growing) community had the resources that it needed to be successful, it absolutely infuriated me that those necessary resources continued to deplete (at a slower rate) while you weren’t even playing. I typically play games in fairly short sessions, and I simply felt like each and every time I tried to jump into State of Decay, I’d have just enough time to stop my settlement from imploding before I’d need to stop again — I rarely felt a sense of progress, and eventually lost my motivation to continue altogether.
Last week I began playing State of Decay 2, and holy hell am I motivated to keep playing in this world (even if I’m not always exactly sure why).
‘State of Decay 2’ has some TENSE interactions.
The basic mechanics in State of Decay 2 are fairly simple. You take control of a group of survivors (a group which will grow or shrink as time goes on, as death is permanent), simply trying to make the most out of what’s left. You’ll quickly fill your extremely limited inventory as you search the world for weapons, food, home improvements, and other supplies (you’ll need to collect these things to keep your settlement running as efficiently as possible, and to help with the morale of your community), and will meet other groups that may help or hinder you along the way. Each character has their own backstory, personal journey, and set of missions to keep you motivated (this mostly works, as certain storylines can feel like a bit of a chore to get through) and as it turns out, you’ll also need to switch characters often: play as the same survivor for too long and fatigue will set in, severely limiting your ability to run, fight, or do much of anything until that survivor has had an appropriate amount of rest. The game frequently feels like a balancing act, and in perfect fashion every choice you make will positively affect your life in some way, while being debilitating in another — these tough moments of choice and consequence are the times that State of Decay 2 shines the brightest, and some of the choices I’ve made have stuck with me long after I shut the game off for the day.
Unlike in the first game (which was set near the beginning of the zombie apocalypse), you begin State of Decay 2 by choosing a duo of survivors who are picking for scraps at an abandoned military encampment some eighteen months after the fall of humanity. While scavenging for supplies, you meet a few other like-minded survivors, and with that, your ragtag community is born. Your group chooses to migrate to one of three towns (each map is approximately the size of the first game, and at some point in your journey you may even want to move on to the next map as you strip the world of resources), and here your adventure begins.
Naturally, it doesn’t take long before a member of the community is bitten and infected, and here we’re introduced to one of the coolest (and most stressful) new mechanics in State of Decay 2 – the ‘Blood Plague’. Sure, there are a lot (a lot) of undead in this world, but there are also a myriad of even creepier, bloodier zombies that can wreak absolute havoc on your survivors if you’re not careful. Blood Plague zombies have glowing red eyes and are fittingly drenched in blood, and if they successfully attack you, a meter will begin to fill with each subsequent strike. Once the meter is full, that survivor contracts the Blood Plague, and is pretty much dead meat unless you can quickly find a cure (created from blood samples from numerous Blood Plague zombies).
Screamers will give you nightmares.
Along with Blood Plague zombies, you’ll also encounter a number of ‘Plague Hearts’ while you’re out scavenging the world. These are gross looking, apparently smelly (based on your survivor’s observations), gory, stationary objects that spew poison, and that need to be destroyed in order to keep the Blood Plague at bay. Taking down a Plague Heart marks quite the challenge, as they can take some time to destroy (fire and explosives work better than regular attacks), and a huge quantity of Blood Plague zombies will spawn as you begin to attack it. Somehow, all of the Plague Hearts on the map are connected, and destroying one will make every Plague Heart that still exists even stronger, meaning you’ll need to bring along better skills, stronger weapons, and likely help for each subsequent Heart that you try to destroy.
As for that aforementioned help, State of Decay 2 brings an exciting new option for taking on this tough, tough world. Sure, you can enlist survivors from your group or spend your precious Influence (the game’s currency, which can be used to trade with other survivors you find in the world, to move to a bigger, better home base, or to help find resources in a pinch, for example) to hire help from neighbouring NPC groups, but this time around you’ll also be able to enlist up to three real world friends (or random people that you find on the internet) to join your game. This co-op mode sounds fun as hell (the game hasn’t launched yet, so I haven’t actually been able to give co-op a shot), but is also fairly limited. Join a friend’s game and you’ll be able to progress your survivor’s stats (shoot to get better at shooting, sprint to get better at cardio, etc), earn Influence, and collect consumables, but you won’t be able to interact with NPC’s or collect more substantial resources like rucksacks or modifications for your home base. Still, the ability to drop in and drop out without much consequence should make for some fun evenings, and it encourages you to play together regardless of your current progress in your own game. I’m in.
Surviving is more fun with friends (I hope).
I mentioned earlier that I hated managing community resources (food, medicine, ammo, etc) in the first game, almost exclusively because they continued to deplete even when you weren’t playing, and I was beyond relieved to learn that this wasn’t the case in State of Decay 2. There’s no Animal Crossing shit here – when you’re not playing, neither is the game, and you’ll return to your world in the exact state that you left it, and can get right back to whatever you were doing when you stopped playing, saving you a ton of time, a ton of resources, and a ton of frustration.
Speaking of frustration, State of Decay 2 in its current form may mark one of the most outwardly buggy experiences that I’ve ever had playing a video game. From odd white flickering lines when driving at night, to zombies frequently falling right out of the sky, to open doors that don’t register that they’re open, to being unable to clear an infestation as a zombie is stuck in a wall, you’ll likely encounter all of these within your first few hours of playing the game. On one instance, my mission was to help another survivor (and potential recruit) clear the zombies from a gas station – those zombies simply never spawned until I quit and reloaded the game. In another instance, I was completing a tougher mission in a far corner of the map, ‘Freaks’ (special, more powerful zombies like Bloaters, Screamers, Juggernauts, and Ferals) were all over the place, and a Plague Heart was just next door. I found the person (a fugitive) that I was looking for, helped him find an item that they needed to find to prove their innocence (all of this being far harder than expected due to my survivor being absolutely exhausted), and all that was left was to help them get back to their community for a fair trial. We snuck back to my vehicle, and when I tried to get in I realized that my character could no longer stand up from his crouching position or interact with anything in the environment. I tried everything that I could (slowly scrambling to a nearby ladder, performing emotes that required standing), but eventually had to quit and reload the game. Once the game loaded again, I was in the same location, but the mission was no longer active and I haven’t seen it since. Super frustrating.
I never did get to kill him (or several others like him that I’ve encountered since).
Yeah… These guys are everywhere.
Aside from these occasional frustrations, I’m having a total blast with State of Decay 2. The game is addicting as hell, and while playing I’ll constantly think to myself “just one more supply run,” over and over and over again – you can pretty much never stop playing until you’re about to pass out from exhaustion (mirroring just how tough things can get in the game if you don’t let your survivors rest).
At times it can be unclear just what you should be focussing on next, but I suppose that’s just in the true open world nature of the game – focus on what you think is important, the supplies you need the most, or the thing that will make the biggest difference in your group. Early on in the game I came across a huge potential home base that would cost quite a bit of influence to obtain, so I spent the next few hours barely getting by, constantly running low on ammo, and breaking a ton of weapons (I didn’t spend the influence to build a workshop, which can help you repair damaged weapons and craft additional ammunition). Eventually I had the resources to make the move, and it was quickly clear that the few hours of struggle was more than worth the wait. I also had an instance early in the game where I’d received word of a group of traders with some powerful weapons who were charging far more for them than was fair. I tried to get them to make their prices more reasonable (because everyone left alive in this world deserves to feel at least somewhat safe), and they simply told me to screw off. Here, I had the choice to leave them be, continuing to gouge prices for their weapons, or to threaten to take matters into my own hands if they weren’t more fair going forward. I began to leave the establishment before thinking “I don’t think that they’ll actually attack me this early on in the game,” and turned around to persist in my demands. The group became hostile and began to open fire, and I was forced to kill the group in order to survive myself. The missions in State of Decay 2 can occasionally feel like they exist simply to give you tasks to fill your day, but there’s also the inverse, where missions like I’ve just described and the choices that you’ve made within them, will stick with you long after they’ve been completed.
The game looks and sounds fine, but it’d be hard to call it very pretty after so recently experiencing titles like Sea of Thieves (read my review here) or God of War. State of Decay 2 is a budget-priced title from a small developer, and while every aspect of its presentation has improved significantly from the first game (and its Xbox One / PC special edition), it’s simply not going to win any awards for its looks. That said, I’ve been playing on an Xbox One X, and have definitely appreciated the game’s 4K resolution and HDR support, The lighting can often be fairly striking, and as the sun sets each day it’s tough not to look at the horizon or up at the gorgeous starscape. Sound wise, the zombies sound gross, the guns sound loud (sometimes teeth-clenchingly so, like when you know you’ve just summoned a nearby horde), and the soundtrack is tense and not overused. Voice acting is another story, and while much of the game is not voice acted due to the procedural generation of many characters, when it is present you… well, pretty much just wish it wasn’t. It’s not good.
Overall, for all of the small (and occasionally larger) issues that I’ve had so far, many of which I’d imagine we’ll see taken care of in patches after launch, I am unbelievably addicted to State of Decay 2. I’m beyond excited to jump into a friend’s world once the game launches next week in order to learn just how much we can help (or hinder) one another, and with so much still to explore in this expansive world, I know there are still a myriad of memories to be made. Undead Labs has crafted a smart action survival game with a lot to love – I just hope that sooner or later the technical issues can be resolved so that the only reason you’re swearing at State of Decay 2 is because of tough zombies or your poor decisions.
State of Decay 2 shambles its way to a 3.75/5.
tl;dr
+Expansive, interesting world
+Massive improvements to the first game’s mechanics, did away with some systems that were poorly received.
+Fatigue system can make things very tense (good tense)
+Your actions (or lack of) actually feel important
-So. Many. Bugs.
-Not very pretty
-Poor voice acting
-Tutorial doesn’t provide enough explanation for some mechanics, leaving you feeling like an idiot when you realize them hours later (here’s looking at you, transferring contents from your vehicle to your supply locker)
Side note: Back in January, Microsoft noted that all future Microsoft Studios published titles would hit their inexpensive Game Pass service on the day they release. This, of course, includes future games in the Halo, Gears of War, and Crackdown series’, and it also included Sea of Thieves (review here) day and date with its launch back in March. As I mentioned above, I’ve (mostly) been having a blast with State of Decay 2 so far, but if you didn’t enjoy the first game, or you’re just not sure if an open world zombie survival title is the game for you, you can simply sign up for a free Game Pass trial and make up your own damned mind!
State of Decay 2 is also an Xbox Play Anywhere title, which means your digital purchase (or Game Pass subscription) lets you play the game across your Xbox One or Windows 10 PC. My fiancé and I have been using this feature to play Sea of Thieves together, and if my computer will run it, we might do the same thing here!