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Key art for State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition shows a hollow-eyed, red-eyed zombie woman in a tattered green shirt lurching forward down a small-town main street, with more shambling figures behind her and storefronts and bunting strung overhead. On the left, a distressed white eagle-and-club emblem sits beside the white 'STATE OF DECAY' logo above an orange 'YEAR-ONE SURVIVAL EDITION' banner.
Games

State of Decay: Year-One

I played State of Decay 2 first, and coming back, the original just couldn't measure up. Onto the abandoned pile it goes

Jul 27, 20242 min readSteam Deck
  • Steam Deck
  • Abandoned
A menacing zombie with glowing red eyes and tattered clothes stumbles towards the viewer in a deserted, post-apocalyptic town. The title STATE OF DECAY is prominently displayed next to the zombie, with the subtitle YEAR-ONE SURVIVAL EDITION underneath in an orange banner. The background features abandoned buildings and a marquee, with other zombies visible in the distance. The overall scene conveys a sense of danger and survival in a world overrun by zombies.

Everything about this game was setup for success, but ultimately it succumbed to the fact that I ended up playing State of Decay 2 first and when coming back to this game, you could tell that they had improved a lot of the mechanics going from the first game to the second. While there’s no real fatal flaw in the mechanics themselves, they just aren’t as smooth compared to the second. I do think that the story would be worth it to play through, and I can’t rule out that I won’t pick it back up in the future, but for now, I’m putting it in the abandoned pile.