Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Developer: Undead Labs
Platforms: Xbox One, PC

After spending over 20hrs of gametime, I've finally realized what State of Decay 2 is. It is another Microsoft game that got released a bit too soon, why? because this game is unbearably playable at its current state. I got access to it via Game Pass, could have bought Ultimate Edition which would have granted me earlier access before 22nd but after all the viral reviews telling the masses that it's a pulpy mess, I decided to wait out and see what they were talking about. They weren't wrong, even though some of the issues I've seen them refer to has been fixed. Majority of it still exists.

I've never played a buggier sandbox game than let's say, Fallout 3 at this point but even then, State of Decay 2 is actually quite fun if you know how to enjoy with what it provides and how the rules work. It's a survival/base building open world sandbox without the option to manually save your progress since it just runs auto-save only and consequently have perma-death for your characters.

There's a lot to micro-manage in here from outposts, inventory, vehicles to survivors of your group and relationship with other ones. Kind of reminds me of Will Wright's Sim games. You can also do Co-op play with upto 3 other players. Though that one also has its own hairy issues which I'll get to afterwards.


Right, with that prefix out of the way, let's get on with the review:

Story

State of Decay 2 starts off with a simple premise, the world has gone completely disarray thanks to a plague that swept civilization and left it to ruins. From the start you pick from 4 different duos of survivors to play of: The Siblings, Best Friends, Survivor Couples or Lesbian Lovers. Though this is just only to get you started as it doesn't give any meaningful affect in the game.

Your main goal basically is to rid of plague hearts responsible for creating zombies with blood plague. Afterwards you fight against outlaws to rid of any more troubles and loose ends before ending with the path chosen by the leader of your group to lead everyone to prosperity. There are 4 different ways to end the game even though it results being in the same context as each other.

The story isn't very substantial. It's by the numbers, taking the concept from Walking Dead and just executing it in text-book manner. However, this game has a nice span to it's multiple endings. If you're like me, you enjoyed playing State of Decay 2 and would want to return for another playthrough, you can start a newgame+ with almost everything you've earned before starting all over.

Gameplay

The game is centered around a loop; which involves you getting out of base, doing activities and finding supplies in order to maintain good morale and help your community base build up to be better. The main objective is to get rid of all the plague hearts that are creating armies of zombies, the more plague hearts there are, the more in rate they'll start traversing the roads, even occasionally attacking your base in waves. You can choose to play from upto 9 people in your group.

SoD2 is played in third person view, with both melee and shooting combat. Most of the gameplay is centered around melee since you can dodge (B button), kick enemies (A button) while hitting enemies with your weapons (X button). Taking down zombies on the ground either by tapping X or holding LB while pressing X to execute them. Gun combat is easier, you engage by aiming (LT) and pressing (RT) to shoot. Pressing X while holding LT let's you reload the gun. Holding LB while walking will make you run but drains stamina continuously.

You can also sneak by the zombies (holding B) before pressing RT to hold them at neck and finishing them off with X button. Walking attracts zombies by noise, so stealth is usually considered a more clean choice while exploring or clearing out areas.

One big stand out is the radio, which you could have request for another player to join your game or look for their games to join instead. Other handful assists like calling in the network for locating each kind of supplies, finding other survivor camps and calling out to find Plague hearts help ease up the already dreary condition set in this post apocalyptic world. As I've progressed through the game, I found really useful features additionally, unlocked after creating certain facilities in my base.

Driving cars are simple, hold RT for acceleration while LT for brake/reverse with left analog stick for steering. You can hold X to open a door just to slam kill zombies roaming around the map. Though be warned, your vehicle is susceptible to any form of damage even from hitting zombies.

Inventory management is very finicky, at the beginning you use 6-pack bags which only hands you 6-slots to put items inside of. Progressing through the game, you'll find bigger bags to help carry items. But your character is also bogged down by weight, as the more heavier items they carry, more encumbered they are which drains your stamina faster and leads them to be easily exhausted and feeling drowsy. You have to scavenge buildings, outposts or houses to find items

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Survival is important, that includes your A.I controlled community members, you can take one each time as a follower travelling around the map. Ensuring that they stay focused and not exhausted. Playing these characters for prolong period will make them weak and tired out. If they die, that's it, they're gone forever. There's a reason why you're tasked primarily to exterminate plague hearts and that's because of blood plagues. Zombies infected with blood plague are fused in red and are deadly, being attacked by them you will catch an infection. Once the bar is filled, your characters are stricken with the disease and have little time to find a cure before they turn into zombies.

There are also 4 other types of zombies called freaks: Bloaters, Juggernaut, Feral and Screamer. First and last can easily be killed but once you're stuck in a sticky situation, they can really annoying. The third can easily be killed by car which makes them sort of least menacing, but not so easy in car. Juggernauts are big, tanky guys. You will need to dish out a lot of damage just to kill them.

Other groups called Enclaves request your help from one occasion to another, building up your relationship with them eventually grants you bonuses. They'll even let you enlist one of them into your group. You'll also be requested of assistance from other lone survivors hiding in houses, rewarding you with supply stash at times. You can also trade with them for few items they can provide as long as you have the influence points to spend. Other Enclaves however, can be hostile and could easily kill you or your community members once they're shot to death.

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Each community member can have upto 5 skills to max out. After maxing one, you can choose between two different options to upgrade it. They also have traits though most of it is just passive in practical terms. They also earn rank the more work they do like killing zombies, collecting supplies or helping out other groups known as Enclaves.

Base management is another ordeal and one of the biggest important factors to building a community. You pick which base to settle in one of the 3 maps within the game: Drucker County, Meagher Valley or Cascade Hills. I moved my group from Meagher Valley to Drucker County, where I found more valuable items though with tougher waves of enemies.

Once your base is settled, you install venues like kitchen, garden, workshop, machinery etc. All used to provide supplies or create items for uses. Also the mood of your whole group matters, if they are cheerful then they'll help you by providing items they scavenged during your cruise. But if the whole group is miserable, then they'll start picking fights and one of them will be thinking about leaving. Maintaining morality is essential as much as having abundance of supplies.

There's a lot to micro-manage in here, hence why I mentioned Sims games. Some aspect of it seemed similar, but it has semblance of originality to it. Sometimes the management can get bit rough, there aren't few necessary features like once setting foot onto your base, you could easily transfer items right into storage locker without the footwork of getting to the locker itself. It becomes very tedious, same can be said for other handywork like sorting out inventory of your follower after you switch to them and within the trunks for cars.

The shooting in this game feels a little rigid, especially with auto-aim. I tend to quickly tap the aiming trigger from the Xbox One just to switch between enemies to shoot but even with my characters shooting skills maxed out, I was having quite a difficulty to pull headshots since finding ammo is difficult in the game.

Worst, because of the game's current state. Character movements are a bit awkward, control responses are clunky. When you drop an item close to someone, you don't get the interaction you need unless they move away from the object. This makes the game difficult to play, with imperfections such as this. Adding insult to injury is refueling your car, you'll have to stand at a perfect spot, taking you 10-20 seconds before prompting the input to fuel it.

There are problems when it comes to fluidity, but if you can tolerate them, then the game should be fun for you. Though expect quite a grind if you haven't figured your way of finishing the main objectives.

Graphics/Technical

Well if you want higher visual fidelity from a 30 USD game, then just play it on PC instead. Because on the Xbox One, it looks terrible. Game is rendered at 1600x900p resolution, dynamically. Shadow quality is terrible, there are lot of jaggies I'v seen thanks to terrible anti-aliasing. The worst aspect is the draw distance, you see only so much when your character just 12m away. Lack of foliage, lower details even on the zombie hordes. Speaking of zombie hordes, your framerate tanks heavily when you're swarmed with zombies almost everywhere. Especially when your base is under attack. Frame pacing issues pop-in some occasions, technical issues like physics going haywire sending zombies off the ground like a cork shot off a bottle. The motion blur in the game makes it intolerable to look around inside zones to loot for items or sightseeing outside the area.

This is just scratching the surface, it has terrible game breaking bugs. Character model and vehicle collision is also terrible, my character is carrying a giant stash of supplies, he couldn't easily walk pass other survivors unless he overtakes them cleanly. If your vehicle gets stuck because it hit a pole or got stuck in between objects, good luck getting it out. I had to push acceleration and tried steering just to break free, wasting my fuel which easily gets eaten up. Full tank does 20mins of drive for most part. One point, my car just tilted slightly at a rock and then it just flipped over, then later the engine started burning and before I knew it, it exploded but the items in the trunk remained intact. Absurd!

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Exiting the game, it would get stuck in loading screen. Longest I've waited was for 7 mins and that's because I was busy elsewhere, it was still stuck. Closing it from Xbox menu did the trick. Continuing with my game, I would see glitchy textures once it was done loading before it goes back to normal.

Sound Design and Music

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The soundtrack here is pretty amazing, it gives you a lot of vibe like of country side, ominous terror and a few softcore chorus here and there. It's nicely balanced and helps elevate the experience. In fact, I don't think I could have tolerated much of the game without it. Credit should go to both Jesper Kyd and Dreissk.

The sound design is ok, I mean it's not loud, high pitched noises to create intuitive immersion. Though most of the sound design is very minimalistic and that's ok for a game trying to pitch that making too much noise can bring a lot of trouble within a survival game. The number of dialogues however don't make much of an impact for my objectives but am surprised by the range of voice work done for this game. Even for a small budget title.

Co-op

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Say, how do you make a buggy game tolerable? by playing co-op of course. It speeds everything up right? well not quite. The game has syncing issues online, zombies would pop out of the blue several times, they would get stuck in rocks and craters, no way to finish objectives thanks to the bug and I faced occasional disconnection issues in one play session.

I didn't even see my friend's base installments, they just disappeared out of thin air. The storage locker wasn't even around, which made it difficult for me to stash my items before reconnecting to session helped alleviate that.

My friend who was driving the car faced FPS issues as well, which was why his car was crashing randomly without a clue as to how.

What do I think?

The big question from the top of my head is this: Did the game get released too early before it got proper Q/A treatment? Maybe it did because Microsoft was desperate for filling up the gap for game releases. This was confirmed for release just two months ago, that was pretty quick for a developer to just announce a title like this went gold. Especially from a small team like Undead Labs.

State of Decay 2 for me is an Enjoyable yet abysmal dribble of a mess. This is worst than ReCore's first launch compared to all other Xbox One title launches. Not only the technical issues bogs this title down, the endgame didn't help me find the closure as I've spend hours into the grind feeling exhausted about it.

By the time I was done making a legacy with my leader, I just put the controller down and felt a sigh of relief that it was all-over. But I did enjoy the game, issues notwithstanding. Hopefully I'll comeback to it again once they've fixed all the bugs and drop a few cool DLCs like they did with the previous game. Am looking forward to that.

But for now, it pains me to do this but here's my score for the game.

6/10

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