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guns are a great way to thin the horde, but can be more trouble then they're worth.
Readers, you may have noticed that I've talked quiet a bit about State of Decay in my last two posts, calling it one of my favorite survival horror games, and also one of my favorite zombie games in recent memory. I feel, though, that a single paragraph doesn't do State of Decay enough justice, and since it's Halloween tomorrow and I'm doing a different article on a different survival horror title tomorrow, I thought I'd expand my thoughts on State of Decay and explain in greater detail why I love this game so much.
As I explained already, I really like anything to do with zombies, often giving otherwise mediocre or even bad games a pass, as long as I get to kill a whole lot of the undead. When SoD was announced for Xbox360, and subsequently PC I was overjoyed. This sounded like the game I had always wanted to make: an open world survival game with a greater emphasis on survival then just murdering a billion zombies. When I got my hands on the PC version it was love at first bludgeoning.
The dead walk
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An average day out in State of Decay.
The campaign for SoD follows a small group of survivors on their quest to escape from Trumbull valley, a huge plot of land encompassing three small towns, a couple dozen farms, and is completely isolated from the rest of the world thanks to mountains on all sides. It's a bit of a dumb reason, but there's so much stuff in the map that you don't really care. There isn't much plot beyond "how do we get out" and most of the story is delivered through your groups interaction with other groups. Like Mount and Blade before it, the best stories in SoD are the ones you create. Like the time I was going for a scouting run and had to outwit a horde because my wooden bat broke and I ran out of ammo. Or the time I was hiding in a house only to be ambushed by a feral zombie and torn to shreds. SoD is great at creating scenarios of pure terror completely by accident and letting you figure a way out.
Obviously, there are zombies. There are a lot of zombies in SoD, and the variety in the zombie models is pretty impressive. It's rare to see the same model twice in a horde. And the zombies are creepy, ranging from recent dead to walking skeletons with meat dangling off the bone. There are a number of special zombies to present unique challenges as well: the armored zombie, immune to bullets; the feral that strikes fast and knocks you down; bloaters filled with poison that damages your health and stamina over time, and The Big Bastard, a giant zombie that takes an enormous amount of firepower to bring down. The fact that all of these can spawn randomly in the world means there's an extra layer of horror in every encounter.
Blood in the eye
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You'll need to learn the land in order to survive.
If there is one thing wrong with SoD, it's that the whole game feels like an indie game in the worst possible way. The idea is there, and it's executed with a decent degree of proficiency, but it's so rough around the edges you'll need a belt sander. Graphically SoD looks... strange. It's running on the CryEngine3, the same tech that ran Crysis 3. It has this weird, psudeo-realistic look to it, but only from a distance, like the devs got a demo version of CryEngine 3 and decided that was enough. What's really strange about it is that it kind of works, especially the game's lighting. Due to the outbreak there's no more electricity in Trumbull valley, so all the interiors are pitch black even during the day. This helps to create a sense of tension, as you'll feel safe keeping your flashlight off, only to suddenly get attacked from a ghoul hiding in the shadows. I strongly recommend the PC version of this game, as it's by far the prettier version. Here's a comparison video courtesy of VideoGamerTV:
What I truly love is that there's a day-night cycle. Not enough games have this these days, and it's refreshing to see. It affects gameplay too, since your flashlight isn't all that great, and vehicle headlights can't be kept on after exiting. You will stumble around in the darkness and it will be terrifying.
They're coming to get you
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Interacting with human factions often leads to the most interesting stories.
SoD offers you two ways to deal with the zombies: Flight or Fight. As you progress through the game there's a balance tip from one end to the other, offering you a tangible feeling of accomplishment as you acclimate to the new world. Just starting off, you'll be lucky to find a gun and a good stick to beat back the hordes. As you progress you'll get braver and better equipped, taking on infestations and roaming zombie hordes single-handily with high explosives and Molotov cocktails. Near the end of the campaign you'll be so adept at killing zombies, that you'll start going out of your way to kill them. The game wisely balances this by making the best items hard to find, ammo scarce, and every weapon is breakable over time. Zombies will attack from all sides, and there's no way to actually clear a zone, so prolonged slaughter is just a waste of ammo and time.
Unfortunately combat in SoD, like it's graphics, asks that you remember it's an indie game. Animations are jankey, and you can often see individual animation frames processing. There's also a very limited number of animations, so be ready to see the same ones play out a thousand times. Zombies have a tendency to act weird too, glitching through walls or killing themselves on the environment. Perhaps worst of all is that the collision detection can sometimes bug out, and attacks, both melee and ranged, just won't connect for no real reason. All of this is manageable, and never really breaks the game, but it is unfortunate to see, especially given how good the game is as a whole.
That's really the big thing with SoD, is that it's really good as a whole, but the individual parts don't always spin the right way. It's great that it gives you so many different weapon options, but they all operate the same way making combat repetitive. It's great that the game dynamically creates drama within your group of survivors, but there's only maybe ten voice actors all delivering the same lines of dialogue again and again. It's great the game requires you to scavange to survive, but there's almost never a penalty for taking to long to gather food or medicine. Don't stare to long at one particular section of SoD, lest you loose the magic of the game.
Expanding infestation
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Sasquatch, one of the more interesting Lifeline characters.
As of this writing, SoD also has two DLC expansion packs I feel are worth talking about. Both of them bring something new to the game, and if you enjoy the base SoD I strongly suggest getting these.
The first DLC is Breakdown, a sandbox version of the main game. There's no story to Breakdown, rather it progresses like an arcade game. You are plopped down on the map with little direction and only two objectives:
1) Survive
2) Escape
You'll need to find and repair an RV, then you get to level up, taking only six survivors and a handful of supplies with you. Leveling up resets the map, but ramps up the difficulty, spawing more zombies, more special zombies, less weapons and fewer vehicles into the world. You can level up six times, each time getting harder and harder, and see how long you last after that. There's special rewards for accomplishing certain tasks, meaning that your never completely out of things to do, and it's a great way to experience the best parts of SoD without putting up with the crappy plot of the main game.
The second DLC is Lifeline, which sees you as a military operation sent to retrieve data about the infestation in the new area of Danforth city. Lifeline introduces some neat ideas, like starting out with an armory of equipment that drains overtime, and the sieges, massive base defense missions against the largest hordes available in the un-modded game. The new map of Danforth's outskirts is also a pleasant change, swapping the open fields of Trumbull Valley with cramped streets and deserted highways. It's unfortunate that you never get to enter Danforth proper, but the idea of having to constantly skirt around the edge of the map helps reinforce the claustrophobic feel. Lifeline also has a better plot then the base game, sticking you with just a small handful of recognizable characters rather then randomly generated ones, and giving most of them actual personality. Overall, it's a great addition to SoD and well worth the money.
Save the last bullet
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Plumbing has never been so useful.
State of Decay is a fantastic game, standing head over shoulders above most other zombie games. It's ability to organically create horror, coupled with the complete freedom it gives to the player mean that it's worth playing again and again, just to see how things can be different. Brutally difficult, but well balanced, and really rough around the edges, this is certainly a game any fan of zombies should consider getting, if they somehow don't have it already.
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