PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Undead Labs‘ latest zombie survival game, State of Decay 2, just released on Xbox One and PC, and I’ve been spending the past week playing and getting a feel for the game. If you’re not familiar with the series, State of Decay originally released in 2013 for the Xbox 360, with a follow-up PC version releasing later in the year. The game became a cult hit, and the sequel looks to rekindle what made the original so popular.
First off, you need to know what you’re getting into with State of Decay 2. This is not Dead Rising; this is not Dying Light; this is not Resident Evil. This game is more or less a base-building game with zombies. Don’t go into this thinking you’re going to slaughter a bunch of zombies and wreak havoc on the world. If you charge into a horde of zombies unprepared, you will get infected, and you will die. And dying in State of Decay 2 is serious. If your character dies, they’re gone for good. Permadeath is a cruel mistress. Low and slow is the name of the game this time, and it’s often better to avoid any sort of confrontation. The zombie plague in this case is the “Blood Plague,” and you need to go around town destroying “plague hearts.” These spawn more zombies and are the only way to help eradicate the disease, all the while collecting supplies to make everyone back at your base happy.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into how the game performs. While l haven’t noticed as many bugs as some people, there are still some issues. One of the most noticeable glitches I see is the Gate Bug. Basically, anytime I would go to a gate, it would appear to be open, but when I attempted to go through, the game would react as if it were closed. A minor thing, but annoying nonetheless. Other more serious issues include rubber banding, frame rate dips, and clipping. I noticed a definite increase in bugs in the online co-op mode of the game.
Speaking of co-op, State of Decay 2 has multiplayer! The original desperately needed it, and Undead Labs took the feedback to heart and implemented it into the second game. It makes zombie encounters easier and allows for more supplies to be carried. My issue with the multiplayer, however, was that there is tethering. If I’m playing with multiple people, two of us cannot go on a longer expedition while the others stay back. The ones that stayed behind will be warped to our location once we get to a certain distance away from them. Not the worst thing, but makes it frustrating when going out on some longer missions. At any point, your base can come under attack and you have to rely on shoddy AI to take care of the threat.
One part of the multiplayer I found interesting was that if I join my friend’s game, I will still get to take back any resources I find while exploring with them. It allowed me to feel like I was still accomplishing something while helping my friends build up their bases. Be careful, though, if you join a friend’s game and your character dies, they’ll also be dead in your game.
Like I had mentioned previously, the majority of my bugs happened in co-op sessions. Two actually prevented me from completing a mission, and that is pretty unacceptable with today’s games. The first had all of the zombies basically fall through the floor to where I couldn’t even see them, and the ones that I could I wasn’t able to kill. The second was a mission where I had to search some dead bodies, but the bodies weren’t appearing. This made a pretty fun game into a frustrating mess that made me stop playing for the night.
I want to praise Undead Labs on the world they created. It’s pretty and detailed while still feeling dangerous and big. Something I’ve heard the developers talk about was that they wanted to create a beautiful world, and they definitely succeeded. Just because the zombie apocalypse happened, doesn’t mean that the world ends. Nature still occurs, and that can be beautiful. There were many times I would go up to the billboards scattered around the area to survey and just be in awe at how pretty they made the world. It also helps that State of Decay 2 is an Xbox One X enhanced game.
I had fun with State of Decay 2, and I’ve been telling my friends that it feels almost like a “comfort food” game, something I can just go back to here and there and just enjoy it. It’s not very polished, and that’s surprising for something that Microsoft is pushing as one of their big exclusives. The vast amount of glitches, major and minor, take a lot of the fun out of it all when they happen. I’ve put a lot of time into the game, and it’s incredibly frustrating to make a trek to the other side of a fairly large map just to find out you can’t complete the mission due to a glitch. However, I am walking away from the game very impressed with the amount of detail and time that Undead Labs put into making the environments, and those alone are enough to pull me back in every once in awhile. I’ll give State of Decay 2 a C. Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think. Are you playing State of Decay 2? How are you enjoying it?
