Man, this game is my jam. I briefly started playing State Of Decay: Year One but someone in The Gamer’s Tavern recommended that I just jump right into the second one. In hindsight, I do think that I would have loved to have played the first one first as there were a few things that, I believe, were callbacks to the first game, but not enough to where it ultimately mattered. It would have been more of a “Hey I remember that” kind of setup than anything else.
This is an open world/sandbox type of game that has some weight behind the decisions you make, but ultimately, probably don’t impact the outcome of the game too directly. You play as a group of survivors, all with various skillsets, personalities and weaknesses, all coming together to just try and make it through the apocalypse. I played it on one of the easier difficulties and I do think that it made the game significantly easier than it could have been. I never wanted for resources, and often times, had to burn them up or risk losing them. I rarely struggled for ammo for most of my guns but it felt like a lot of the long guns all used the same type so that made it a bit more of a choice.
I spent the bulk of this game driving around in various vehicles, my door held wide open, smashing the ever living hell out of zombies as much as I could. My wife even ended up asking me why I was chuckling so hard while playing it because the action makes such a satisfying squish noise and the bodies explode with the level of gore that you would come to expect out of a game like Mortal Kombat. Overall, the game was fun and enjoyable and well worth the play through.
That isn’t to say there aren’t issues with the game. The various enclaves throughout the map can get really annoying. Especially when they start getting demanding for various resources. In one gameplay day, I had the same enclave ask for rucksacks of materials 3 different times. It’s nothing excruciating, but when you’re on the opposite side of the map taking care of the biz, you have to stop what you’re doing, go get what they need, and then take care of them so that they don’t get mad at your and turn hostile. I also didn’t love that I had to sign in with a Microsoft account to play it in the first place, but that’s more for personal reasons than anything else.
I’ve already got my eyes set on the release of State of Decay 3 and will be picking that one up for the deck.