Zombies! When it comes to zombies I find the genre to be a little overused, whether it be in movies, TV series or Video Games. That being said every now and then I come across something that makes me stop and go 'yeah that's pretty good', this is exactly how I felt about Undead Lab's game State of Decay. Naturally, when I heard they were going to release a sequel I was excited and was looking forward to playing it. I finished playing it last night and wanted to share my thoughts with all of you.
Hot dogs. They are simple tasty snacks that are enjoyed by both rich and poor alike. They don't look particularly appetising but they taste great, there are so many options you can use to dress them up and add a little more flavor including sauces, relishes, onions, chili, cheese, you can use pretty much anything. While it's hard to get it wrong with a hot dog it is possible, have you ever watched The Naked Gun movies with Leslie Nielsen? If not then go out and watch them, especially the first two. The reason I bring it up is there a scene where one of the characters is eating a hot dog, he bites down on something hard, he cracks his tooth and finds he has a someone's ring in his mouth. That would be bad enough, but he then finds a human finger in his hot dog, it was horrible but it was also funny. Playing State of Decay 2 I found myself asking was this a tasty hot dog, or was there now a dead person's finger in my mouth?
Story
The storyline is a little light, you get to start as either two siblings, or two sweethearts, one of whom gets bitten by a plague zombie. Apparently getting bitten by a zombie is bad, but a plague zombie is worse, not exactly sure why and it's never really explained. Time to find a someone who can help produce a cure and then choose a region to set up home, in my case, I went to Meager Valley. Once a cure is created you need to focus on setting up a community and electing a leader. Depending on who you choose you will start the Sheriff, Warlord, Trader or Builder questline. The next step is to take out nasty looking things called plague hearts to help cut down the zombie population. Outside of this you just need to keep people alive, play a few main missions, and you're done.
The characters are pretty interchangeable with the exception of maybe Samantha, who is a bit nuts but at least has somewhat of a personality. The characters will repeat dialogue to the point where I had to consider muting the TV. Overall the story was lacking and there was no real attempt to develop the characters or the world as a whole, the ending itself was like a firework that doesn't go off - disappointing.
Visuals
The first State of Decay was not amazing visually but it was solid enough, I had heard State of Decay 2 was a real step up, I heard wrong. The game does look a little better than the first but to me not by much. The backdrops are little dull and lifeless, there were some parts in Meager Valley that had nice mountains and there was a cool looking base of operations surround by trees, but little else to get excited about.
The enemies look fairly good, especially the new Feral zombies which move more like animals. I found there were issues with loading some landscapes and zombies so sometimes it seemed like they materialised out of thin air which I found to be a little jarring. Often characters would disappear and reappear beside me almost randomly, this happened a lot when I was driving.
Overall visually it wasn't great and the name Meager Valley certainly summed up how I felt about it.
Music
The sound moves from an apocalyptic wasteland to a more thoughtful and bleak guitar sound, with the only exception being some fights which have a more intense feel to them. The composer of this score is Danish composer Jesper Kyd who worked on the first game along with working on other games including, Assassins Creed The Ezio Collection, Borderlands The Pre-Sequel, Darksiders 2 and Forza Motorsport 4.
The soundtrack runs at ninety minutes and has a few good tracks including, 'State of Decay 2 Main Theme', 'Fighting Chance', 'Adverse Effect', and 'Dangerous Microbes'.
Listening to the soundtrack again I found the experience to be very different, primarily because while playing the game the music didn't really linger in the background but instead came from out of nowhere abruptly which I didn't really like.
Overall the soundtrack wasn't bad but the way it was used in the game could have used a little more work.
Gameplay
State of Decay is a third-person zombie survival game, it starts out by offering you a very basic tutorial that covers movement, combat and searching, which you will spend a lot of time doing. If you are searching through items slowly all will be well, if you go too fast then you're going to have a bad time.
The combat, for the most part, works well and the finishers really add a little bit more gruesomeness to your kills. Weapons degrade quickly so always have a backup and don't get attached to anything because it's often easier to pick up something new then try to maintain it. Throwing in the game does not work the best and is particularly infuriating when throwing fire-based weapons at a plague heart that then end up setting you on fire.
One of the biggest elements of the game is building a community, to do this you need to gather lots of resources and other survivors. There a load of facilities you can build, everything from rainwater collection, and gardens, to gun ranges, and workshops. Each facility offers additional perks of a sort, which all seem good until you realise many of them heavily consume your resources, so unless you have lots to spare it isn't really worth it. The massive issue is that you need to pick your survivors carefully to ensure they have the right skills, they're also skills books that some characters can use. What you don't get warned about is you can only use one skill book per survivor, and sometimes not even that which can make upgrading your base tough. Outposts will help you in obtaining more resources, food, water and oil being the three most important.
Naturally, every community needs a leader, depending on who you choose you will get one of four questlines that provide little information and seem to work under the assumption you will play the game multiple times.
There are various enclaves you can befriend as you play the game, and selling items to them will increase you influence which is handy for unlocking outposts or calling in radio support. It felt a little wasted as a whole because I had so much unneeded influence left over once I had completed the game. If your willing to look around a bit influence is almost pointless.
The game is littered with bugs, driving cars would sometimes be fine and then all of a sudden they would spin out of control for no discernable reason. Doors opening and closing by themselves on cars and houses were a frequent occurrence. Characters disappearing was commonplace, sometimes they would reappear straight away, other times they were gone for five minutes. There was two stand out characters for me, Adam 'stands on cars a lot and lets you get pulled apart by zombies' and Wes 'I played so much Dark Souls I can't stop rolling around'. I will say big shoutout to Jerry one of the Whisky Peddlers, before completing his mission I used him to help with mine, by the end, he was near death, doctors say he will make a full recovery.
Overall there were some good points with the gameplay, but I felt for the most part Undead Lab's made things more awkward then they needed and in doing so less fun. Not the worst experience ever but seemed to lack something the original managed to capture.
Final Thoughts
So after twenty-five hours of playing how did I feel? I wanted to like State of Decay 2, I really did but there was so much wrong with it. The story was poor, the visuals were fairly underwhelming, the music wasn't bad but it's execution felt poor, there were some enjoyable moments while playing but they were fleeting. I know I will play the original State of Decay in the future, I know I will not be playing State of Decay 2 again. Overall I struggled to score the game, I wanted to be as honest as possible, so in the end, I settled on giving this one 2 out of 5
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