State of Decay 2 is probably one of the most ambitious
zombie-survival games out there. It’s large open world that works well for a
zombie survivalist’s dream. While the game’s story isn’t exactly new or
creative, the gameplay makes up for it. The only problem is that the game has
quite a few bugs that can easily hinder the gameplay.
The story is simple, after the first State of Decay, almost nothing changed. Zombies are still roaming,
the military that was in the area has scattered among the survivors in the
game, and there’s a new Blood Plague going around. While this is going on,
several survivor groups are doing everything they can to help the many groups
of survivors in the area.
The Blood Plague is a new type of infection going around
that’s causing zombies to turn red and bloody. If a survivor contracts the
Plague, they need to be treated or else they will eventually die. After the
group of survivors pick a region to stay in, they find a new home and go off to
prevent the new infection strain while trying to keep you small community
alive. That’s really it for the plot. The rest of the game is simply about a
group of survivors that you control, to survive however you want.
The game makes it clear that maintaining a home base isn’t easy.
I was forced to make outdoor beds for my ever-growing group of survivors,
meaning that their morality would stay low for a while. My resources were slim
at the beginning, and felt like I was working my ass off to keep my team alive.
Despite this, it feels satisfying to know that my small group of survivors are
still alive, despite their morale being below 50%. But after two days of
scavenging, I finally balanced my resources so that my survivors were
satisfied. This means that instead of looking for these pesky materials, I can
venture off to other cities in the region to look for new cars, guns, and maybe
a better home.
The base mechanics works pretty well overall it’s not
particularly hard to maintain if you always look for supplies while exploring. So
what do you actually do to build your home base? Well you choose a survivor take
a fresh weapon, some snacks, some meds, and maybe another survivor to watch
your back. Then like a true nerd you venture out to the worst place imaginable.
Outside where the zombies seemingly
appear out of nowhere and sometimes seen hovering around.
Joking aside, I personally love the feeling of being a lone
scavenger while fighting off these pesky zombos who are getting in my way. It’s
not easy though, while handling individual infected amounts to pressing the
attack button until you can execute a finishing move, the problem quickly
escalates when their friends hear the commotion. Immediately there’s a problem
with having five of the infected trying to grab you at the same time. Meanwhile
a special infected comes in to mix up combat
It does get crazy later on, so your survivors level up their
skills fairly fast as long as they’re doing something. Search enough containers
to level up a survivors’ Wits stat to increase their search speed or move
quietly, increase their fighting skill to unlock helpful moves to take out
zombies. Also if a character specializes in a utility skill, like cooking, they
can give bonuses to some facilities in their base. It surprised me how
practical my survivors became as I learned efficient ways to gain experience.
I also was able to bring a few cars back to my home base to
make scavenging even easier, even if it’s a bit loud. The cars even have
storage space so I could easily turn in everything I’ve gathered! Car’s come with
a small price of refueling and repairing if it gets messed up.
The quests aren’t too bad either. Trading materials with
survivors groups, dealing with theft, surviving ambushes by renegade bandits,
and clearing out infestations are all there. There’s even some more unique
missions that your own survivors will do if you switch to them. They range from
retrieving a unique weapon, finding a relative, policing the apocalypse,
destroying plague hearts, and even becoming an action star for fun and morale.
It’s pretty interesting at most.
For co-op, players can invite up to three friends can
venture out together and survive, though it’s a shame since only the host
player gets the benefits for their own base and supplies.
State of Decay 2 is buggy, simply put. The game runs smooth
for the most part but looks as if it will break at any moment. Enemies float
from afar, I have to hit zombies at a certain angle at times or else I would miss
for no reason. A zombie once got stuck behind a door I needed to go through as
there was no way else to get inside, preventing me from finishing up an
infestation. Switching survivors in an outpost can cause the survivor’s mission
I’m switching to disappear, making the mission unavailable for some time.
Among these, are some immersion-breaking bugs that are annoying,
but don’t really don’t affect gameplay. These glitches include: survivors
spazzing out when opening car doors, sometimes when jumping over a fence the
camera does a 180 for one moment, enough to accidentally make a survivor jump
back over the fence, cars can easily get stuck in many situations, just
Hopefully these glitches will be ironed out upon releases.
On a side note: a few gamemodes aren’t available from the
YOSE, and there’s going to be a horde mode being made separately. It’s easy to imagine
what this will be, stay in a homebase and zombies attack, in an all-out
fight/shootout with the zombies, or even other human. I think that sounds
pretty rad.
The game gets 6 out of 10.
As somebody who played the first and the YOSE editions of
the games, I can say that it is an overall improvement. Scavenging, base
building, and fighting work better than the first game, making it more
playable. I can also say the beating the game itself is a bit weak, and the replayability
is a 50/50 to me since the rewards are sparce. While it runs well on the PC I
can’t say the same for the console versions that periodically crash. The bugs
are just way too noticeable to ignore and the quest-disappearing glitch still scares
me every time I try to switch characters. It’s obvious that a few more game
modes will be added later on to bring some players back, but Undead Labs needs
to fix up these bugs if anything.
