Now Playing: State of Decay 2

I reviewed the original State of Decay back in 2013 in which I described the game as ‘an ambitious title with a lot of cool ideas packed into it. Unfortunately, the execution of a lot of those ideas is slightly flawed in one way or another, which sullies the overall experience.’ It was a game I felt was deserving of a more refined and expanded sequel.

So here we, over a decade later and I’ve finally got stuck into State of Decay 2 which I’m pleased to say is a refined and expanded sequel . . . but also not quite the step up I was hoping for – and in some ways, something of a step back.

I could probably copy and paste a lot of my review of the original game here because so much of it still applies to this sequel – the good and the bad. Like the original, State of Decay 2 is a third person, open world zombie survival game with an emphasis on scavenging, base building and community management.

If you’ve played the original you’ll be right at home in State of Decay 2 because it plays largely the same. You have a team of survivors with their own unique skills, each of which can be improved by controlling them directly and taking them out into the field, or by training them at your base.

Your base serves as your primary safe zone in which you have a limited number of building slots to construct various upgrades to keep your survivors fed, rested and happy. There are multiple base locations on each of the available maps – some large, some small. But the larger you go, the more people you need, and more people means more resources consumed, and more resources required to survive.

You’ll find these resources out in the world, split between items you can use immediately, or ‘backpacks’ of a specific supply type – ammunition, medicine, building materials, food & fuel – that you can return to your base and add to your supply pile which is needed to keep your base operational.

Scavenging for supplies in a world full of zombies is obviously dangerous, but you can take a companion survivor with you for support, and you have plenty of weapons and tools at your disposal to even the odds. Scouting locations is key to know what resources may be available, but also if any zombie hordes are wandering nearby, or if a plague heart is active in the area.

The ‘plague hearts’ are a new addition to State of Decay 2. How many there are and how active they are will depend upon your chosen difficulty. They spawn zombie hordes that travel across the map and ‘infect’ locations. Over time, these infections grow and spread so if you don’t deal with them – and destroy the plague heart releasing them – you’re going to be in for a rough time.

Although I like the plague hearts, I’m not so fond of the ‘blood plague’ mechanic in which your survivors can get infected by zombies and die if they’re not treated. It’s not hard to treat the plague, but it is hard to avoid it – it becomes a little tedious having to treat infected survivors every time they tangle with a single zombie.

The main game mode in State of Decay 2 is ‘Campaign’ which acts as a sandbox mode in which you pick your survivors, pick your map, choose your difficulty and get to work. The goal of the campaign is to clear out every plague heart upon the map and complete a survivor’s ‘leader goals’ which vary depending upon which character type they are. It adds a fairly basic story aspect to the sandbox, but it’s nothing to get too excited about. Once you’ve completed the goals you’re free to depart the map and pick the next carrying all your survivors, gear and skills with you and start again.

It certainly adds more replay value to State of Decay 2 than the original, but it can get a tad repetitive regardless of map – even on higher difficulties, clearing out the plague hearts becomes a matter of routine. It also, sadly, suffers from the same ‘mission spam’ as the original, as other communities on the map come to you far too frequently with their requests.

Whilst you can choose to ignore them, these smaller communities do become beneficial over time once allied with your camp. I just wish they’d be a little more patient – I had a mission from one community who I’d helped on several occasions time out because I was busy with something else, so they contacted me on the radio, told me to ‘go f**k myself’ and disappeared off the map. Rude!

It wouldn’t be so bad if you could send your survivors out to help you deal with all these annoying little errands, but you can’t. In fact, your fellow survivors are kind of useless when you’re not directly controlling them. This is why I feel a little disappointed with State of Decay 2 and why it feels like a bit of a step back.

In the original game you could, at the very least, ask your survivors to collect backpacks you’d dropped if you ran out of space – but you can’t in the sequel. I was really hoping to see an expansion on the kinds of commands you can issue to your survivors, not a reduction. It would be nice if I could could tell them not to just collect a backpack, but to loot a specific location, or clear out an infection.

It would be nice if I could take more than one survivor with me on a run, or order my companion to search and loot a specific object. It would be nice if I could send them to deliver supplies to other communities. It would be nice if they could actually drive and I could direct them where to go so I could take a break.

It would also be nice if, when a zombie horde attacks your base, they didn’t rush out through the front door, leaving it wide open and try to fight every zombie in melee when I’d built perfectly good defensive towers for them to shoot from. I’m really hoping State of Decay 3 improves drastically on survivor AI and functionality because they’re kind of f**king useless here. Oh, and you know what else would be really nice? A proper co-op campaign mode!

Beyond the Campaign mode you also have ‘Heartland’ which offers a smaller, more story focused experience. It’s pretty fun and I enjoyed playing through it at least until the end in which you have to fight your way through these very annoying and repetitive ‘plague walls’. It is, at least for me, a ‘one and done’ kind of experience. There’s no reason to go back to it unless you’re desperate for every achievement.

And then you have ‘Daybreak’ which is a simple siege mode in which you have to defend an NPC against several waves of zombie attacks. It’s intended to be played in co-op but you can try it solo – just don’t expect to have much fun as the AI companions it gives you can’t shoot for shit.

Overall, State of Decay 2 is a solid, refined and expanded sequel, but it doesn’t really innovate or dramatically improve upon the first game in the way that I’d hoped. It fixes some issues I had with the original, but it also still suffers from some of the same problems, and it also introduces some new ones of its own. Like the original, it’s frustratingly close to being great. Maybe in the next one, eh?

7/10