State of Decay Review
The first game from a rookie studio. No hype. Set in the aftermath of yet another zombie holocaust. A seemingly extortionate price point. This is a done deal. Surely Undead Labs' Xbox 360 exclusive State of Decay isn't worthy of your time or your 1600 Microsoft points? Don't be so sure. It's time to gear up and strap in for one of this year's most startling debuts.
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Story
You begin your adventure as a character named Marcus, a hiking enthusiast who quickly comes to realise that he's truly neck-deep in dung; most of the locals are after his flesh, and he needs to use all of his leadership skills to ingratiate himself with a small, ragtag band of hungry survivors.
After that, the shape of much of the plot is solely down to you. The fictional world of Trumball Valley is a surprisingly vast sandbox that's ripe for exploration, and explore it you will: State of Decay is all about managing communities and resources, scavenging for valuables and (obviously) dispatching hordes of the undead when they're stupid enough to come knocking.
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But you'll need to make sure that you don't get too attached to any one character, not even Marcus. In true Dark Souls /ZombiU​ fashion, anyone and everyone is a viable target, and if you get cocky or nonchalant for even one second, you are going to die for good.
Gameplay
Though it's reminiscent of sandbox games such as Grant Theft ​Auto, State of Decay is much less focused on story than any GTA misadventure. You'll happen upon many things purely by accident, and some of the most enjoyable missions you'll find have precisely nothing to do with the central plot at all. Combat is brilliantly simple, and very much in the mould of Dead Rising: melee weapons are your best ally, but firearms come in very handy both when you're scouting new locations (scoring long-distance head shots from the top of a water tower is immensely satisfying) and when you're in the midst of an unscripted zombie invasion.
You also need to manage (and build) your community by sharing and distributing your loot, undertaking side-missions and engaging with members of your group who are on the verge of losing the plot. If people lose faith in your struggle you're liable to lose them forever, and that can have a deeply negative affect on everyone else in your clan. You also can't stick with one character, because as you scavenge your way across Trumball Valley your stamina will deplete until you're barely able to do anything: at which point, you need to head back to base to swap out with one of your other comrades.
If you think that any of this sounds boring or monotonous, rest assured: you're dead wrong.
Visuals
There's only one thing that lets the side down in State of Decay: the presentation. It's truly a scrappy beast at every turn, with unspeakable frame-rate problems (which lead to input delay issues during combat) NPCs that constantly glitch in and out of scenery, and audio cues which sometimes drift up to ten seconds out of sync. It's such an ambitious project that these aesthetic headaches are surprisingly easy to forgive, and to its credit nothing else - not the trust system, the loot pooling, the scouting - are anywhere near as scrappy. This is a sharp, seriously refined game that happens to live in the skin of a thoroughly broken one.
Overall
​A truly brilliant surprise, State of Decay is one of the most impressive achievements of the year so far. Lengthy, exciting and occasionally downright heart-stopping, it's the kind of zombie game that some people will deem to be the finest ever made. It might not have the emotional resonance of Telltale's masterful The Walking Dead or the kind of addictive melee carnage that features so heavily in both Dead Island and its recent sequel, but in its own way State of Decay is easily as memorable as any of those. ​And for the record, ​1600 MS points is an absolute steal. What are you waiting for?
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9/10
Review By Chet Roivas
