I’ve been trying to write this for a while. State of Decay 2 is a challenging game for me to write about. I’ve been playing it for about a week now. It’s not the prettiest game out there. It has tons of bugs, janky A.I., and the frame rate isn’t what it should be. Yet, despite all of this, I have been having quite a bit of fun over the past few nights, either helping a buddy out on his game, or having him visit mine. Playing on Xbox One X, I’ve encountered my share of glitches and bugs, with two of them breaking the game to the point where I’ve had to restart. Usually they’re harmless bugs though, none of them have resulted in the unnecessary death of one of my survivors. They’re more of a nuisance than anything.
So why is it so hard for me to write about it? Honestly, I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I don’t want to talk game mechanics or explain the game in any way; Review sites have had that information for a month already and sites like IGN were reporting on it even before that. On the other side of the coin, the game play and scenarios in State of Decay 2 are fun to play, but not necessarily talk about. The minutia and tedium that makes up the minute-by-minute gameplay is just that, tedium. It’s the same type of tedium and repetitive tasks you’d see in a game like The Sims or Fallout Shelter. The difference being that instead of tapping or clicking on an object, you’re directly controlling what your character does. It’s compelling and fun for the person playing the game, and boring as shit for everyone else.
As I said though, I’ve been playing the game for a little over a week now. Long enough for me to realize that, despite all its shortcomings and glitches and kinda ugly characters, it’s a great example of the middle-tier class of video games that we used to get back in the day, before publishers like EA and Ubisoft decided that the only games worth investing in were gigantic, 100 million dollar blockbusters. At $29.99, State of Decay 2 is a great mid-budget game, and instead of complaining about the so-so graphics and fairly buggy net-code (things that can be fixed), we should all just be really glad it exists. Sure, it’s no God of War or Horizon Zero Dawn, but I really don’t think it has to be.
The Playstation One days were a great example of a wide array of good games made on a budget. For every Final Fantasy VII, there was a Brave Fencer Musashi. For every Silent Hill, there was a Clock Tower 3. These games were great and made by small teams on limited funds, and often saw lower price points (or quick price cuts under the Greatest Hits label). Not every game had ridiculous production value, and honestly we never expected them to. As long as they were fun, that was all that mattered.
It’s a weird and head-scratching day we live in where game prices begin at $60, and yet we will complain that a $30 game is not up to a certain level of quality (when in fact it’s light years beyond what we paid $30 for 20 years ago.) I’m sitting here writing this knowing full well that games like Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice released at similar price points. I’m not saying that a budget game can’t be amazing, just that we shouldn’t expect the moon and stars from something that probably had outside limitations. Between the niche genre and Game Pass promotion, Microsoft had to know that State of Decay 2 wasn’t going to sell in the millions, and they probably budgeted the project accordingly, and that’s okay. That’s how companies stay in business.
On a similar note, State of Decay 2 was still a huge technical improvement over its predecessor. I loved the first State of Decay, but damn that game was rough. It was hard to look at and choppy as hell. It was obvious the guys at Undead Labs were learning as they went, and even with MS throwing some additional cash at them to pretty it up for the Xbox One version, it still leaned more toward the fugly end of the spectrum. Here with the sequel, they’re taking what they learned and adding online co-op, and it’s obvious that’s where the time and money and attention was spent. The graphics themselves are serviceable, but it’s not hard to notice the re-used assets and very similar looking survivors. A few tricks like HDR and some bloom lighting help make it look a little better than it really does.
One thing though that I am going to complain about, is that the story seems to have taken a hit this time around. There may be a pair of rose-colored glasses I’m looking through, but I remember the first game having a varied set of story missions that forced you to leave your base and assist or fight against other groups. As in, you had to, or else the game would not progress. Here, once you and your enclave are settled in, it’s all about keeping your peeps happy, destroying infestations and plague hearts and generally doing whatever you want to do. You’ll get frequent requests over the radio, and you can decide to help them, or not. If you want to ignore them and leave them to whatever fate befalls them, that’s up to you, but honestly there doesn’t seem to be any reward or consequence for any of it. I helped a certain enclave repeatedly, and they were considered allies. At the first sign of my not answering their help request, they packed up their shit and left. Another enclave is just downright hostile to us because I refused to give them our guns. Excuse the fuck outta me for not handing over the very things keeping us alive.
I have yet to destroy all the plague hearts, but a buddy of mine has already gone through, and I was informed that after the plague hearts, there is one conflict with a hostile group (apparently depending on who your leader is) and then it’s The End. You can begin another community from scratch and use your pre-existing one to provide yourself with a bonus for your new base. Think of it as State of Decay 2’s version of “Prestige.”
I’ll be honest, I get what they’re going for, a campaign that can be completed in a few days and restarted again. Relatively short play sessions, as opposed to one game that lasts for 100 hours with no real end in sight, can actually be a positive thing. That there is a definite end to the game and it can be obtained in a few evenings lends a bit of bite-sized appeal to a genre that’s all about indefinite, directionless single player campaigns.
Perhaps this focus on smaller, replayable campaigns was part of the model all along, and we are looking at a game that sits comfortably between budget indie titles and triple-A blockbuster releases. I think that’s something to be celebrated, not criticized.
