State of Decay Review

State of Decay is an arcade game on Xbox live marketplace selling for 1600 microsoft points or $20 that I say is worth a buy.  The game has sold 500,000 copies in two weeks and has become microsoft arcade fastest selling game of all time.

State of Decay by Undead Labs throws you in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. The main goal of the game is keeping your base alive: setting up outpost and parameters in order to make sure you get the resources necessary to survive.  You spent the game searching houses for resources so that the base can survive and upgrade the base.  You can have watch towers, medical bays, gyms for training, beds to get rest, and kitchens to sleep.

One thing I admire about the game is that you can switch between characters when another character gets tired.  There is an emphasis on how survivors interact with each other, and makes a valid point that good team dynamics are vital to survival.

Each character has plot driven stats. A player that is a athlete will have good leadership attributes and player that is a day dreamer will have high intelligence attributes.  The game is good at generating action based events with characters such as a character getting getting angry with your decision, so the two of you have to go let off some stem by taking out a horde of zombies.  These events add to the cohesion of the base itself. The intermingling of the dynamics of the character interactions on the base and missions of the game gel well together.

You can gain neighbors trust and create alliances where you share supplies and help each other out when in trouble.  With the supplies you have a barter honor system called influence.  You have points for each item given and taken from inventory.

Combat is simple its a mix of melee and third person shooting.  Weapons degrade with use.  Knowing which weapon to use will be key in some parts of the game.  Using a suppressor with guns will be the difference between alerting a horde and killing a single enemy.

Some of the negatives are an over-sight that can be tolerate.  Like most xbox games, driving is poor at best.  No game seems to get the driving aspects right since GTA.  In State of Decay, cars do not re-spawn.  Collision detection and the A.I. is poorly designed.  Sometimes you'll see a zombie or playable character get stuck on objects or hit invisible walls.  Zombies can hear you easily so sneaking around is ineffective due to glitches. Some of the camera work and sight lines are not idea, particularly when you are being attacked.

State of Decay is an ambitious game that tried to do a lot with a worn out zombie horror genre. It's rough around the edges, but the ideas State of Decay present are good.  Being able to make due with what you have and who is available is the best part of this game.  Sometimes when favorite players are tired you are forced to used the character that available and that adds to the difficulty due to their lack of skills. It's not quite there, but good enough to try.  With some patches and more content, the game can be a better bargain. Undead labs said that an update to the game is coming by the end of summer as soon as Microsoft gives their update certification.

Overall, for the effort and price, I give State of Decay 7/10.