A new dawn rises in State of Decay 2 [review]

If you want life affirming, watch Bambi.

IoBS evokes, cleanly and with cold terror, the fear and paranoia of the Cold War.

Dawn invokes the terror of mall shopping in Pennsylvania doused in Ketchup blood. It has all the script and atmosphere of a 3M corporate video with the production values of early Jon Waters. It’s a "classic"if two bots and a Joel were involved.

And to you, Sir.

Cold War? Why not just watch Hunt for Red October? If I wanted an allegory I’d read Aesop!

Zombies work because they don’t need to stand for anything. They can, I guess, if you’re one of those people who needs a “message” in your entertainment so it doesn’t feel like a waste of time, but sometimes a zombie is just encroaching doom, that will not stop until it’s chewing through your flesh that it can’t even taste or digest anymore. Zombies don’t make sense and they don’t need to. They’re the boogeyman. They don’t come from space and they don’t stand in for sneaky russkies that want to steal our way of life.

So ketchup blood and rotting chicken meat are more terror inducing than a Doppelganger? Indeed, in your words, Zombies “stand for nothing”. I will leave you to eat your cheese whiz from the can nozzle, sir, and bid you good day!

Now…was this debate nerdier or less nerdy than “Deckard was a replicant”?

Less nerdy. But probably also less dumb.

A flying silver ball that attaches itself to your cranium, and then drills your brains out, is much scarier.

Haven’t read the review yet, but I wonder if this formula wouldn’t transfer very nicely to other conventional videogame settings. The fantasy State of Decay, the SF State of Decay etc etc.

@tomchick should I play the first State of Decay?

Tom mentioned in his streams last week, SoD2 is by far the better game and SoD1 can be skipped at this point.

Polygon agrees, zombies are better than vegetables.

And Polygon (or Kotaku for that matter) should inform my gaming and pop culture opinions because…?

Because polygons. What are you gonna do, listen to a bunch of sprites? Maybe a voxel or two?

If you had just said “Because agrees with me”, you would have had me right there with you.

If you had said “Because Social Justice”, I would have laughed.

And you would have laughed too!!

@divedivedive this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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Hey, but at least you know that’s the big issue! Stamina is life more than hit points are life. Just always be ready with some sort of stamina booster when you’re fighting, be aware of when you’re playing with a character whose stamina hasn’t leveled up, and use the dodge key to get out of a tangle before you’ve run out of stamina instead of when you’ve run out of stamina.

Ugh, you just did.

But are you saying you like Day better than Dawn. Seems to me Romero’s downward slide began in Day. Maybe it’s just because I’m staunchly anti-Bub. Once he starts folding in a “zombies are just misunderstood” subtext, I start checking out.

Tell that to poor Tom Savini torn apart in the mall!

I’m not sure what their deal is with Microsoft, and they’ve been pretty coy about whether they’ll be on Steam, but I’m guessing it’s part of their contract to be coy about being on Steam. I’m hoping maybe a matter of a few months? Is that too optimistic? I hate to see this game languishing in Microsoft’s corner of the game world. :(

Especially when you’ve got power hooked up and your base is nicely lit up with electric light. Who wants to go out there with only a crappy flashlight? I do find nighttime is good for when you have to make long drives.

That could be interesting.

I’d be interested in my base being recreated on someone else’s map and vice versa. I’m not sure what the limitations are with NPC settlements, but it would be cool if I could synchronize my map with @Telefrog’s or @Jason_McMaster’s to build whatever base they’re running as an NPC settlement in my game. Imagine the possibilities! I could negotiate lucrative trade deals with @Telefrog’s base, while taking control of @Jason_McMaster’s base and exiling all his characters.

It does lay some thematic groundwork for zombie lore. But, yeah, terrible substitute. Besides, the 50s version can’t hold a candle to the 70s weirdness of the Philip Kaufman version. So freaky.

-Tom

I have his autograph! He’s pretty rad

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Sheet. Amateurs! You want body snatching weirdness? Try the 1993 Body Snatchers directed by Abel Ferrera. It’s all about the loss of identity and paranoia of being a military family.

Dated! Oliver Hirschbiegel’s version is about the invasion of Iraq. But it doesn’t get any respect because Gabriel Anwar isn’t nekkid in it.

-Tom

Tom is right. and I thought this game would SUCK. Watching a stream doesn’t do it justice. The graphics are pretty good and the combat is so much better than the original. The base balance keeps you making decisions that matter. You never get to a point where you feel completely set (like in the orginal), I like that going out on a run really matters more in this game than in most of SoD. Also each base has differing strategies, and running a smaller group is sometimes more viable than more than six. There is still ALOT that can be done with this game to make it so great! but its great already! Too bad Microsoft are too cheap of bastards to invest more into it! totally worth it.

Also you should still play Lifeline and the original story. The original SoD had a good story overall and it still is worth playing.

Ferrera’s version is definitely dated. It also feels so much weirder to me because the focus is narrow. It really only resonates with a very specific audience: teens of military families.

The original Dawn is a masterpiece. But before Dawn or even Night there was Invisible Invaders (aka Night of the Living Dads)

I don’t know if Romero ever acknowledged the obvious influence.