Game Reviews: State of Decay

Hello everyone, Lin here with a review on the single player zombie survival, State of Decay! While there's been a lot of zombie survival type of media (especially games) out there nowadays, State of Decay (SoD) is interesting because it's probably one of the firsts to start implementing RPG elements to the genre.

When I mean RPG, I'm talking particularly about Western RPGs where the game is less focused on the story and more focused on the main characters' development (skills, abilities, etc). This is one of the things I liked about the game. The fact that characters could level a variety of skills that allowed them to survive was very refreshing and thoughtful the more I played SoD. It made sense, at least in reality, that people would get better at something the more they did it as opposed to being amazing at it from the get-go.

The small amount of characters you get start with may be more balanced with health and stamina or will have a surplus of one and a lack of the other. It's possible to balance them out a little by using them more, like gaining experience and leveling up in an RPG. It doesn't change the character, but added on to what they already started with. This was a big plus to me I worried that the characters would all end up becoming the same person if you used them all enough. Another thing to add is that characters have the capability to be hurt, tired and sick throughout the game, forcing the player to have to play with someone else. While many will groan at having to suddenly switch characters and not always use their preferred character, for realism purposes, I can see why this would be important. It's kind of ridiculous to have a character go through 10 or so missions in one day and not be tired.

"...Characters have the capability to be hurt, tired and sick throughout the game, forcing the player to have to play with someone else."

As you continue to play the story, you get to recruit new survivors that you can bring back to your base. All of them will have different 'perks', sometimes alluding to hobbies, careers or personalities before the outbreak (i.e: a former architect has experience with construction; someone who liked hunting has higher cardio, wits and shooting experience). This aspect in gameplay was something I liked and really helps each character that is recruited to offer their own unique knowledge to the base.

Speaking of the base, it's possible to place down certain buildings or upgrade already existing ones. Every building has different functions, such as crafting things like silencers and molotovs or allowing your characters to start with better stamina, health, etc. or finding out where certain materials are via radio. Sometimes in order to keep for healthy morale, buildings must be upgraded or a certain amount of materials have to be gathered. I actually like this concept, though I think it's annoying that you can only hold one backpack full of materials and have to go back and forth between the base and resource areas.

The base can be upgraded with a workshop that can make surviving easier. 

The controls of the game are smooth and not a hindrance. I think it's a nice touch that there's a finisher for melee weapons, but the only issue is that there doesn't seem to be purpose. I would think that there would be some advantages, you can use it without depleting stamina.

Graphics are pretty good and standard of the current zombie games nowadays. Nothing too surprising or spectacular.

So it seems that I've only been giving positives, but in actuality there are a few issues I had with the game. First off, like a lot of people, one of my complaints is that SoD doesn't have any multiplayer options or even some kind of co-op. While I don't think that it's completely necessary (as the game works very well on its own too), I think it's still an aspect that would only benefit the game. Having a friend tag along as the partner you can bring with you would have been a cool idea and it would help with gathering supplies. I didn't put any negatives for this, but it's still just a shame that such a thing wasn't implemented.

The soundtrack itself was not terrible. Ambient music at night in particular tried to drive home fear or horror, but frankly with SoD being an action game, it's not too frightening, especially with what you get to pack later on in the game. Cars make hordes laughable.

What's interesting is that at night the zombies become a little more aggressive. At first it can have a rather starling ambiance, but eventually I started to look at it as just a less advantageous way of fighting. 

SoD does an excellent job creating its characters, unfortunately, because of the large amount of characters that are recruited, there isn't a lot of depth to them. As mentioned before, I very much like their perks and traits, however, none of these are expanded on very much. Many of them, even your handful of starting main characters, aren't given much detail other than their initial traits. This leads into the story, which is, in a way, still bare bones and frankly not interesting at all. I eventually lost sight of it since it was so hard to differentiate between the main plot and side stories. Surprising, since the game itself wished to add RPG elements. As aforementioned, I thought of it more like a Western RPG, where it's more about the freedom and development of the main character through increase of skills and abilities, which the latter is true. However, with the poor story and limited depth to the characters, it's more than likely for me to revise my statement and say that SoD is an action game that pays a rather large homage to RPGs. It's impersonal characters and lack of a compelling story back this claim up. This is probably my only real gripe with the game, leading to a rather low score in this area.

I also have an issue with guns in the game because, as it probably seems apparent as you continue to play the game, using melee weapons are so much more efficient than using a gun. Nearly everything you do makes a certain amount of noise and shooting a gun is literally the loudest thing in the game. It calls everything else in the vicinity every time you shoot with it, therefore it's much more efficient to take out the few zombies on you using melee weapons rather than the gun also pulling an unknown number of zombies gathering around you. I found myself getting an unbelievable amount of guns and ammo in my storage which just sat there most of the time.

A plethora of supplies, so much that it typically gets wasted.

All in all, I think that State of Decay is an good game with pros and cons. The gameplay is crisp and entertaining and honestly is part of the game that makes it really fun. The RPG factors that are in the game are done beautifully and the mechanics with sound, base building and material gathering were all well done. However, the game did come with some problems for me which lowered its overall score. So, State of Decay gets a 7/10.

Stats:
Time: 11 hours
Length: ~2 weeks
Sessions: 2 hrs~

Criteria:
Music: 6/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Characters: 6/10
Graphics: 7/10
Controls: 8/10
Dialogue: 5/10
Story: 4/10
Overall: 7/10

*"Replayability" was not added to the list because I have yet to complete the game!