State of Decay
Review
To die for
by Christopher Coke
reviewed on PC
Risk vs. Reward, Life vs. Death
State of Decay is a constant balancing act of risk versus reward. You are given the opportunity to bring new survivors into your settlement but you have to consider how they will fit in with your current residents. Each settlement only has a certain amount of beds, so do you eject one person to bring in another? Or do you turn him away and lose out on his unique skills? You can also take party members out on missions and switch between them, but if they die they are gone forever. No more storyline. No more buddy you have come to care about. Just gone. This sense of loss gives decision making a unique weight uncommon to the genre.
There are also RPG like elements in the game. Each character has stats that they can level up through use, such as shooting and cardio and wits. These play into how suited you are for survival and I often found myself making decisions based on them. The game also features a weight-based inventory that can be expanded with new backpacks. It works and is true to the setting but often falls into the same trap as other RPGs and becomes more annoying when you have too much to gather and not enough space to hold it all.
A Solid Port
Thus far, little has been said about the game’s jump to PC from the Xbox 360. The reason is as you might expect, it is a basic port. There are Steam achievements and a range of resolutions, but the wide array of graphics options players have come to expect are absent. Instead, we have a handful of presets and an oddly black-edged title screen when running at 1080p. The game performs well and looks quite pretty on its highest settings. The increase in performance is a big jump from its Early Access release earlier this year. I also failed to experience even a single crash, which is another marked improvement. Still, it would have been nice to see a few more options or even Steam Trading Cards added in.
Setting Fatigue
Even with so much good, State of Decay still struggles to support the same old setting. I am a big of a zombie fan – I have a trunker anthology by my bedside as we speak – but even I felt that a sense of “been there, done that” when running through this world.
Even though it is a worthy entry to any zombie fan’s library. Its take on the zombie apocalypse might be familiar but its approach is fresh and exciting. You get more than a simple head-basher. Instead, you have action, stealth, roleplaying, and even some light strategy that brings out the simulation in survival-sim. Your choices have weight. Zombies are deadly. The good guys don’t always win. And, as we hoped, it looks and plays best on PC.
7.5
fun score
Pros
Tense, frightening atmosphere; great settlement gameplay; character system.
Cons
Feels too familiar; not enough options for PC players
