State of Decay Xbox One Edition - Maxi-Geek Review

State of Decay is a game that was initially released for the Xbox 360 back in 2013 and was received very well and when it was announced that the game was coming to Xbox One, I thought it was my chance to play what most people had already been enjoying and I can see why.

State of Decay is a game where you take on the roles of survivors of in the aftermath of a terrible event that has turned a lot of the people of the world into zombies. When you start the game, you must make your way from the water’s edge to the nearby ranger station. Along the way you will be given glimpses of how the world, or at least this small section of it is going, you shall also learn the basics of the game, looking for supplies, dodging or fighting enemies, surveying the land and alike, after the tutorial section has completed, you will head into town and this is where things get interesting.

The story in State of Decay will vary depending on your choices and choice is a big thing here, after you move to a safe house, your choices can help build it up or tear it down, literally. As the player character, or one of them, you can head out to scavenge for resources, like food or building materials, which in turn will help you fortify and build upon your home base. It is from this base that you will get clues to things happening in the world, other survivors might be in need of help, gun shots in the distance might spell trouble and even heard of zombies moving around the world can impact your choices.

The story moves along, depending on what actions the player takes, going out and giving help to other survivors, clearing out infected locations or just getting supplies, will do little to move things along, but the game won’t actually tell you to do a story mission. If you do these story missions, it will impact the world, which will change things up for you, this usually results in new zombie types, or new characters being introduced, but always increases the challenge for the player. Deciding if you should move the story is not as important as, do you want to, as the open world is fun to explore for a time, though spinning ones wheels can drag the game down, it’s a choice you need to make often and they are hard choices to be sure.

One of the earliest choices I was given was whether or not to accept another group of survivors into the little community I was in, they were close by, just across an open space, but night had fallen and in the dark things can change fast. I made the call to go there, I kept low, crouched the entire way, which reduced my travelling speed, but also kept the noise I made to a minimum. Along the way, I spotted the odd zombie, shuffling around, but thankfully I was able to make my way there without incident, which is where things got hairy. When you are looting anything in the world, you make noise, as you would expect, rummaging through draws or a tool chest will create noise, but it was around this time that a zombie heard was nearby and the noise drew their attention.

From then on it was about keeping them out of the house, while the people I had come to collect finished collecting their belongings and supplies, which thankfully was just after the heard had been dealt with.  So with all that wrapped up, we made our way back to home base and all was right, but of course, as is the case with a game like this, things change pretty fast. I went to head out again, but my character was listed as tired, which resulted in reduced stamina, which impacted how long I could run for, but also was impacted by the amount of weight I was carrying around. So I had to swap to another character, which give me a new set of skills to adjust to, where the first character was a leader and ok in a fight, the second character was military trained and could handle a gun better.

It was this level of constant, shifting choices that I loved, never knowing if carrying all that extra weight on the way back from a run would cause me to fall into danger. The missions that were available to be ranged from supply runs, to locating new places for bases or lookouts and while after a while things did fall into the pattern of repeating itself, there were still moments of fun to be had in the world. Perhaps the element that struck me as the most interesting was that if your player died, you did not get a game over screen, reload the last checkpoint and move on, but you were done, you selected a new character from the base and went back to it, but depending on how your player died, you could encounter them in the world as a zombie, which was cool. But with the size of the world, that is not a guarantee.

Sadly the world was one of the worst parts about the game, as apparently with all zombie apocalypse, it was set in rural America, which meant things had a distinct look to them, while nice, didn’t offer up a large range of things to spice things up with. Broken down farms, roadside diners, pickup trucks, all staples of the country, but not exciting for a game world and while I am not wishing for the sequel to take place in New York City, something different would help. While the world was bland, it still fared better than the rest of the game, with a lot of visual issues, it was something of a problem more often than not.

The first few times I noticed the visual issues, they were small things like characters clipping through doors and such, but it was not long after that I had zombies appearing right in front of me or disappearing just as fast. There were even times of cars having elements disappear or change as I rotated the camera, but by far the worst was when the camera itself would position in the middle of a wall or person at the start of a story cutscene, which gave me a special look at things, but did it always took me out of the world, I mean the tension the game was trying to build was shattered in a moment; something that it never really got back.

Sound wise the game struggled to make an impression, it was quiet for the most part, a lot of world turning into zombies would do that, but it was the absences of noise that was ok, it was when noise existed I had issues. Really early on, there is a character who insists on never using a car, as the noise will attract zombies, if you do drive one you will see a circle around the car that shows how far the noise as spread, but the problem is, the cars just don’t sound like cars. Getting in a car that has tentacles painted on it and not having it sound like a supped up import is strange, but not different than it sounding almost the same as pickup truck.

Guns also sounded a little light, but distance could also play a factor in that as well, the other area that was a letdown were the zombie heards, while not the size like some TV shows have shown, a lot of them at once should sound large, commanding and downright scary, but they were not, the sounds were just individual zombies playing at once. The screamers and other zombie types were different enough to help them stand out, but even at night when there is almost no sound, hearing zombies never gave the sense of dread you would expect it to.

State of Decay is a pretty average game on Xbox One, from a remastering point of view, it does not look like a lot has been done for it, it feels more like a relocation to the platform than a remastering. But the gameplay itself is pretty solid, managing your Homebase, people in the base and your supplies all while surviving the world is pretty fun, though one trip might be enough.

Thanks to Xbox Australia for supplying the game to review