The first State of Decay game was an interesting but limited third-person zombie survival game wiht a touch of base management thrown in. It was the game that would appeal those who wanted to recreate their own version of the Walking Dead, and lead their team to survive the apocalypse. However, there is always a challenge with these sorts of games... either they end up being too easy, and the player reaches a state of equilibrium with nothing really worth doing... or they are just too hard, and the player gets swamped in short order. For me, I would prefer the latter... open-ended games that just run out content and interesting things to do end up being boring to play. However, the very definition of a survival game is the fact that you just survive and that there should be NO dramas!

State of Decay 2 (released by Undead Labs in 2018) is the sequel to the original State of Decay, and it updates much of the mechanics that were annoying or tedious in the first game whilst updating the visuals and graphics for a better looking game. The Jaggernaut edition is the culmination of all the released DLCs (Heartland and Daybreak) which give a different spins on the vanilla open-ended survival game, catering for gamers who crave different flavours in their survival genre!

The Vanilla campaign (this review deals mostly with this game mode) is the original open-ended survival. Heartland gives the game a more tightly focussed narrative, with a storyline pushing along the flow of the game towards a distinct end. Lastly, the Daybreak mode turns the game into a crushing rogue-like survival... where defeat and eventual zombification is a certainty!

The Setup

The open-ended campaign gives you a selection of a few pairs of "odd couples" to begin your survivor collection with. These are the two characters that you will play with during the introductory tutorial section and who will form the basis of your starting settlement. It is interesting that Undead Labs have chosen this route this time. Last time, you started with just the single character that wasn't very well defined in terms of backstory.

The banter between the two characters is what is supposed to get you really attached emotionally to the people. However, despite there being little drops of personal and backstory information, it really isn't enough to get you incredibly invested in their survival beyond their ability to fulfil certain tasks and as toons to keep the settlement running.

So, the basic set up is that some virus outbreak has led to the zombie apocalypse. Survive it... not much more to the story than that!

One incredibly annoying thing is that you need to have a Microsoft XBOX LIVE account to sign into the game.... and it is mandatory. On the surface, it is to sync games or to be able to play with others or something like that... but there is no real reason for it to be mandatory. I don't play with other players, and I was playing on a single machine and so there is no need for an always online mandatory account sign in.

Even more annoying is if you have your account secured properly... in which case, digging out giant passwords, or cutting and pasting... and 2FA keys. NOT FUN! It seems to me that I should just set up a throwaway account for these sorts of games.

The Game

The open campaign drops you into the the region of Providence Ridge, a county the has a number of small towns and scattered farming and holiday houses. In this very much American-type heartland area, you also encounter petrol stations and gun stores, pharmacies and shopping centres... all of which can be looted (sorry, explored) for supplies that will be critical to the survival of your settlement.

Combat and gunplay is very similar to the first State of Decay. Melee drains endurance, whilst guns draw in additional zombies. So, it is a trade off between being stealthy or hitting hard.... and with the special zombies like Freaks or Juggernauts... you will have to go disturbingly loud!

Although health is really quite an important to the survival of your character, you will soon find that keeping an eye on your endurance is much more important. Individually, regular zombies are slow and not very dangerous... however, if you find yourself surrounded and unable to run away, you will be in for a nasty and short-lived apocalypse!

Sneaking around the mostly unaware zombies is really something that is quite tense. You can sneak and kill them easily... but one mis-step, broken window or noisy search... and you will have to start moving fast and loud!

Much like the first game, you can bring along a single other survivor from your settlement to help you out on missions. Having an extra pair of hands (or an extra wrench or katana...) is always a good option to get you out of scrapes or to cover your back... or to carry an extra bit of loot! More to the point, having someone alive and chatting to you whilst you can hear the groans and moans of the surrounding zombies is a way to hold on to your sanity whilst sneaking around...

The AI control of the partner is a bit dubious though... in normal melee, they deal with things pretty well. However, they do have a tendency to break windows noisily by jumping through them rather using the door... or going extra loud with firearms. On base defence missions, I've seen a few of them open the door for the zombies as well....

Even worse is when they try to tackling a tough enemy in melee when you want to throw a grenade into the fray! What I miss is a degree of AI control... to set them to use melee only, or to set engagement modes.

Despite meeting and allying with a number of groups in Providence, you will have a maximum number of survivors that you can recruit. Tops out at 12 people, I do wish you could recruit more... it feels weird that you have to all of a sudden stop recruiting survivors and start leaving allied groups to their own devices.

Each survivor has a set of unique "story" missions that are designed to give some insight into their history and character... mostly, it is a chance for some bonus loot. The stories are pretty light in style, and in the end, you don't really care so much about the characters... but more about the skills that they bring to your settlement.

... speaking of skills. Every character has the 4 basic skills which can be further specialised and levelled up. Then there is the unique 5th skill slot, which can be populated by learning from a skill book, or is already preset by the character generator. Most of the time, if it is preset, it is pretty useless... and it is the only slot that you can place the all important base building skills of Electronics, Automotive Repair or Construction.

So, it is quite unforgivable that it is NOT possible to "forget" the fifth slot! I don't want Movie Trivia! I WANT and NEED Auto Repair! The only option is to exile or kill the survivor in order to make space for a new one... who might have a free slot open! No attachment...

The new Blood Plague mechanic is an interesting one. Most of the zombies are just non-infectious scratching and killing zombies... however, there are Plague variants (with glowing red eyes) who will infect your survivors and turn them into zombies unless they are treated in time. Critical to the Plague Zombies are the Plague Hearts which spawn them... these make for critical targets in your mission to survive the outbreak.

The Hearts are tough to kill, and the area around them will be teeming with the dangerous Plague Zombies and other special zombies... Unfortunately, that means that you will need to go loud to kill them, which means attracting MORE zombies. So, taking them down fast is a must, which means explosives, Molotovs and grenades... except your AI partner will be obsessed with hitting it with a stick.

... they do back off after you blow them up the first time....

Infected survivors will gradually fade over time and then succumb to the zombie virus. You have two options... a bullet to the head, or trying to cure them. Plague Zombies have a low rate of dropping Plague samples, which can then be used to craft a single cure shot (you need three samples per cure shot). The low drop rate means that you will have to mow down quite a few of the plague zombies to get enough samples... running the risk that you get ANOTHER survivor infected.

.... the best way to do this? Go CARMAGEDDON on their zombie arses! Driving around in State of Decay is a noisy affair, but cars are essential to getting around. They help you bring back loot, and whilst they are running, they are a great way to escape and to mow down hordes of zombies.

This time, they have two limiting attributes... fuel and condition. Fuel tends to be plentiful enough, and I always keep a spare can in the boot. Repair kits are much more of a scarce resource... unless you have a mechanic in your survivor group... I didn't because all the 5th skill slots were tied up!

Inventory management is a much better experience this time around, with switching between the inventories of the survivors been quite easy when exploring! One area of improvement would be a way to switch and use the inventories of the survivors who are the base. When you want to double check that each survivor is adequately armed and equipped, it is quite tedious to switch directly to each character one after an another instead of being able to do it from a base menu.

Bases are a bit of a mixed affair. One HUGE fix from the original State of Decay is that time no longer progresses with the Operating System time! Before, that had meant that the game was "playing" in the background, with in-game time progressing whilst you lived your real life. This could result in settlements and survivors dying whilst you were cooking dinner or just going to sleep for the night in the real world! Thankfully, there were a number of hacks and mods that stopped this from happening... but it was a poorly thought through design choice!

Bases come in various sizes.... larger ones have more building slots and ability to house more survivors, but are harder to defend if you don't have enough people!

There are a limited amount of upgrades that a base can take... and so the base development and construction metagame is much less interesting once you hit the top upgrade levels. Hopefully, in the announced third version of State of Decay, they can improve on this...

Visuals, Sound and Performance

State of Decay 2 is a much nicer and smoother running game than the original State of Decay. I had no complaints about the way it looked or the way it performed with the review hardware (listed below) playing at high quality graphics settings at 1080p. The setting is done quite well as well... with the varying shops and houses being interesting to explore.

The soundscape is solid... musical background is kept to a minimum, which allows you to really focus on the different sounds as you stalk through the apocalypse. Hearing the howl of a Feral or the roar of a Juggernaut over the background groans of the regular zombies is always terrifying! Really adds to the tension as you hastily scramble to finish looting a shop or house without drawing too much attention to youself!

My Thoughts

State of Decay 2 has all the ingredients that make up the sorts of game that I would ordinarily be highlt attracted to. Survival, limited resource management, base building and character development... and it improves mechanically and graphically over it's predecessor.

So... why does it feel so hollow to play? After the initial rush of setting up a base, and getting a secure flow of supplies and outposts.... well, there doesn't feel like there is really that much to do! Sure, other survivors and allies throw the random ambient quest or task at you... but it gets to be meaningless busy-work. You don't need the supplies, and you only do it because well... there isn't anything else to do!

... but I guess that is the Apocalypse in a nutshell, and the main danger with open world management games... eventually, you just run out of things to do!

I do have a little wishlist for the upcoming State of Decay 3 though, I want a better and deeper RPG system of skills for the survivors and no limits on the survivor numbers. I want the ability to take more than a single survivor on missions, and the ability to fine grain their behaviour.... and I really want a deeper and more involved base management metagame.

Above all, I don't want to be harassed constantly by meaningless quests by yet another survivor who got trapped in a house for the up-teenth time by zombies and needs a ride home! I guess these sorts of quests really just cover up the lack of depth in the other systems... and you end up having to do them, to avoid the negative morale and reactions by letting them lapse!

Review Specs

Played at 1080p (144Hz) on:

XMG Fusion 15

CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: SSD (SATA/Nvme)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 2070 Max-Q

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