Replayability
This game presents a lot of options for what you can do with your time playing. Sure, you can actually do what the game tells you to and expand your community while completing objectives. You can also just screw around and run some zombies over with the closest truck. Since it’s an open world game, you have plenty of options. This is a game I see myself playing for months and coming back to for more later on.
NOT
Story
The story of State of Decay reminds me of a B-movie zombie flick. As a fan of zombie films, I enjoyed this quite a bit. Despite my enjoyment of the story, I cannot ignore that it is paper thin. To add to this negative, there are no human enemies, thereby minimizing the human versus human factor that’s bound to occur in a world falling apart. You won’t find a story as deep as TellTale’s The Walking Dead here. Much of the backstory is learned by reading the menus and the miscellaneous journals.
Technical and graphical problems
Many times while driving a car, my game’s framerate would stutter. NPCs sometimes behave oddly too. It seems that at times NPCs are in the wrong position during cutscenes or get stuck behind locations like the grocery store. More than once, I’ve also had NPCs not get into vehicles with me. They just stand around and instead of getting in the car. I’ve even seen a couple of zombies fall through the floor. The combat has some odd characteristics, too. Player attacks seem to be active a little too long, and zombies get hurt when an attack animation is over. In addition, the graphics aren’t the smoothest, but they are good for an Xbox Live Arcade game.
Minor Flaws in Controls
When it comes to controls, it feels a little sluggish at times. Driving in this game is functional enough, and the gunplay is mediocre. Sometimes, encounters feel a little too easy. When killing zombies with the finisher attack, your character is invincible and often gives you a window to back away from enemies. In addition, this game has its own day and night cycle, but for some reason, repairs are tied to real life days. Your weapons and vehicles are repaired each morning in real life. This means that sometimes the best option for supplies is to put the game down until the next day. It’s an odd choice for a game because many gamers like to sit and play for a while at once.
Verdict
State of Decay treads familiar ground, but that’s bound to happen with any zombie game. It also does suffer from a few technical problems that are difficult to ignore. Despite this and despite the sluggish controls, I had a great time playing and plan on playing the game again. As a fan of zombie fiction, I was looking forward to playing this game, and I was not disappointed. It’s overall very solid and rather addictive. If you like slaying zombies, building your base, building your virtual friendships, and leveling up characters, give this game a shot. In my opinion, this game is definitely worth the entrance price.
[Editor’s Note: State of Decay was reviewed on the Xbox 360 platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]
