GAMING WORLD
REVIEW ON
The Limping Dead
S tate of Decay 2 sometimes feels like a far too real representation of the mundane reality that comes with surviving a zombie apocalypse. Consistently being on the hunt for food, resources to craft ammunition, and survivors to bolster your ranks doesn’ t always translate into a captivating game play loop especially when you’ re faced with horrors other than the countless undead that roam around you.
Like the first game from Undead Labs, State of Decay 2 infrequently checks in with an overarching narrative. You’ re given the choice of three pairs of survivors to start off with, each with their own bare-bones background stories. Those stories don’ t really matter, but your decision does define your starting area and the preliminary survivors you’ ll team up with to combat a growing sickness called the Blood Plague. The plague is the singular goal for you to work against, as your community strives to eradicate it from your town and build towards a brighter future.
That mission boils down to finding zombie-invested settlements that you’ ll need to first scout out and ultimately destroy, with grotesque, beating Plague Hearts at the center. These fights are the only real way to measure progression through State of Decay 2’ s otherwise open-ended campaign. Each settlement you conquer strengthens the rest, forcing you to step back and regroup before attempting to blow up the next. They ' re the toughest challenges the game has to offer, too, serving up waves of foes for you to fight as you valiantly lob another Molotov at the heart, hoping it vaporizes and takes all the nearby undead with it. Unfortunately, they are basic action set-pieces at their core, without much variety to help shake up the otherwise monotonous scavenging that surrounds them.
State of Decay 2 is primarily about survival, and it bears all the baggage the genre is known for. Although you’ re spared the stress of dealing with individual meters for hunger and thirst, you’ ll instead be engaging with ones that affect your community. Food, medical supplies, and crafting materials all factor into the stability of your community, with the overall mood of your survivors governing how well you’ re doing. Supplies are littered around the dilapidated and abandoned settlements surrounding you, which are easily scouted with a little high ground. Your objectives hardly stray from going out, clearing an area of enemies, and scrounging around for consumables, gear, and large rucksacks of the more pertinent supplies you’ ll need to keep settlers happy.
The act of gathering these supplies is rarely gratifying, though. Although your settlement initially requires some quick work to get on its feet, State of Decay 2 hardly feels like it will fail you for slacking on your routine duties. Bugs are prominent too and can range from slightly annoying to near game-breaking. Graphical hitches are frequent, including enemies clipping through the environment and sometimes having entire hordes stuck on single piece of the environment.
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