State of Decay 2 hands-on | Struggling for survival in Undead Labs’ zombie sequel
Stepping out beyond the secure fencing of the base - currently a ramshackle of mattresses out in the open, workshops and supplies stacked on shelves, but a safe zone nonetheless - it’s not long before you notice the presence of zombies nearby, mostly docile and not shuffling anywhere, too far apart to be considered either a horde or a threat. But with my first character packing a shotgun, my curiosity gets the better of me.
Blowing apart the first zombie is no problem, but the noise quickly catches the attention of far more undead than expected. Suddenly, the mini-map in the bottom corner highlights more ‘zeds’ (as they’re also nicknamed), and it’s terrifying how quickly things escalate. They’re not just climbing over fences in pursuit, some are even running. And it turns out my ammunition is also very limited.
Dropped in about seven hours into the game past all initial tutorials, this hands-on introduction to State of Decay 2, proves to be a brutally harsh lesson on what separates Undead Labs’ creation from hordes of other games about the zombie apocalypse.
Even for the less trigger-happy who prefer the heft of a melee weapon for smashing in a zombie’s skull, these actions are governed by your stamina, which will quickly deplete after a few swings, just when you’re getting overwhelmed and find yourself too out of breath to make a run for it. It’s a contrast to the action-oriented Dead Rising series, where you’re equipped to dismember armies of undead with reckless abandon.
It’s clear after a couple more rash encounters that State of Decay 2 requires a more considered approach, either crouching towards a zombie for a stealth kill or avoiding confrontation altogether, although repeated actions like running or killing zombies can also increase your character’s experience to unlock new abilities and in the latter case, earn influence, the game’s currency.
State of Decay 2 | At a glance
Combat is however only one aspect of State of Decay 2, as your success of survival is also dependent on your community’s ever-changing morale and finite resources, from food, to medicine, to materials, that will need constant attention.
The diverse procedurally-generated characters that form your community, which you can switch control over back at base, are also something of a finite resource. That is, if anyone dies, their death is permanent. This can be devastating especially if you’ve invested time developing their skills, or promoted them to become your community’s leader, the closest State of Decay 2 has to a protagonist, albeit liable to change based on circumstances.
Perhaps in our age of watching Game of Thrones or indeed The Walking Dead, where key characters can meet a grisly demise when you least expect, this is less of a shock. With no determined story but one that emerges through the player’s own actions and choices, you may even find that your future leader is a less experienced member of the group you’ll be forced to train up, or perhaps a completely new survivor you’ve yet to recruit on your journey of survival.
In another excursion, we encounter a hispanic woman called Socorro who’s been separated from her group and who we help get back to her base. The bad news is that we find everyone dead, or perhaps turned into the zombies that are now present, with a screamer - a freak-type zombie who makes a horrible high-pitched sound to attract even more zombies - inside the house. We manage to dispatch them, but with nothing left, Socorro at least trusts me enough to let me recruit her to my community instead. Every cloud, one might say.
It’s a long way before anyone in the group will gain enough standing to become leader, so we attend to a more immediate concern - our dwindling supply of materials. Pressing up on the d-pad brings up a menu for radio assistance, which also includes a new option of calling for another player to drop-in to your game to help. In this case, we spend some of our influence to ask for help locating materials to scavenge.
It’s a treacherous journey just getting to our destination but once you reach a building, you may need to clear out zombies before spending time rummaging through drawers, cupboards or boxes to find what you’re looking for. It’s at this point you realise the limit of what your rucksack and pockets can hold (i.e. not a lot at all). While searching can be sped up by holding the left bumper, the extra noise also risks attracting more zombies, proving an even more nightmarish scenario in tight interior spaces.
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It’s a desperate scramble back to base, except I’m already in critical condition, having also been bitten by one of the new dangerous blood plague zombies (identified by their red eyes) while another more feral zombie is scurrying after me at alarming speed, swiping away at what little health remains. But the game shows leniency when you’re at death’s door by allowing you to mash a button to recover just a little more health, like your internal survival instincts and adrenaline kicking in for one last push.
Even the base turns out not to be permanently safe, with zombies attempting to overrun it when you’ve caused too much of a ruckus, requiring the efforts of your other AI-controlled companions to help beat back the horde. Once the threat has died down, I finally stagger over to the supply point and replenish the base’s materials - a meagre supply, but it will do to carry us for another day, though now it turns out food is also running low.
However, it turns out the attack from the plague zombie earlier has infected my character with the blood plague, which not only leads to death over time but can also spread to the rest of your community. Finding a cure requires destroying plague hearts located around the map and collecting plague samples, not an easy feat as those areas also draw in a lot of plague zombies.
With no cure at hand and this preview session almost over, it’s with a heavy heart that I switch to another character who’s instructed to grant mercy to the infected, with a bullet to the head. It’s a grim way to end, but when State of Decay 2 launches later this month, I suspect many more players will find themselves making just as many tough decisions to survive this zombie apocalypse.
