The bugs, not the zombies, are the real problem here
J UST like its subject matter, the zombie genre refuses to die. TV shows, movies, books, comics, ‘experience’ days, cartoons and even marathons, our thirst for tales of the dead rising again seems unquenchable.
The gaming industry especially has a morbid fascination for the undead, and rightly so when you look at the huge hits developers have had.
Dead Island, Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead, Typing of the Dead, House of the Dead (can you see a theme here?), and State of Decay are all classic examples of zombie survival games.
The sequel to the latter is the latest zombie title to hit consoles.
When the original State of Decay landed on Xbox Live Arcade in 2013, it was very different to survival games that had gone before. Rather than picking up a weapon and racing for the nearest extraction point, you were part of a community determined to survive against the odds.
It didn’t matter how big your gun was, you needed brains and skill to not just outwit the evil banging on the door, but to manage the humans within who, as food, resources and morale begins to dwindle, turn on each other.
It was a great premise that was sadly plagued by boring missions, bugs, glitches and awkward controls – a classic example of an unfinished game released to fit a deadline.
But State of Decay 2 will be better – right?
Set 18 months after the zombie apocalypse, you are part of a small community trying to rebuild and expand your home while keeping out the brain-eating hordes.
You don’t control a single character, instead you freely switch between community members, helping to develop skills and stamina for some, while giving others a much-needed rest.
Precious resources dwindle quickly, so raiding parties have to be sent out regularly to scavenge for food, fuel, ammunition and medicine.
To add to the stress of a mission, if a character dies in the wilderness, there’s no coming back – at least, not in human form.
The open-world map is split into three regions, each with its own size, landscape and density – each hiding treasures your group desperately needs.
Nighttime is particularly impressive – and unnerving – as a veil of absolute darkness descends rendering you virtually blind. Rounding the corner to be confronted with a sea of glowing zombies eyes was terrifying, and I double-timed it back to my car to escape.
This highly-anticipated sequel greatly improves on the first in that the environments are more varied, graphics look slicker, driving around and slaying zombies is finally fun, and there’s a play worthy co-op mode – but it’s still incredibly buggy.
The game’s AI is woeful, the looting mechanics loop, with items in each map appearing in the same shops and houses, and the number of times my character got ‘stuck’ became a real issue for me.
And that’s what’s so annoying about this game – it’s almost all there, but not quite.
If this was Undead Games first stab at State of Decay I could be more forgiving, I could say it’s an ambitious game that’s a little rough around the edges.
But it isn’t the first stab, it’s the second, and it should be much, much better than this.