State of Decay 2 - Time is your worst enemy

This game gets sliding down ladders right. Every game with ladders needs this feature.

While playing Far Cry 5 the other day, I wondered if ladders in older games might have been forever ruined, now that we’ve all been spoiled by ladder sliding. I think most contemporary games have this now.

I’ve been playing this exclusively for a couple days. Turns out that even after watching a few streams here and there, I still had the wrong idea about this game was really all about until I put a couple hours into myself. Had I realized this was more or less city/community builder wrapped in open-world action-adventure zombie clothes I probably would have been much more enthused about it after seeing how janky combat, movement, and vehicle travel looked on-stream.

I’m enjoying myself quite a bit and finally found a game (I don’t already own) to justify my current GamePass subscription.

Fortunately, SoD2 does its best to ensure that old-school lethality of ladders is still present. I approach going down a cell tower ladder more carefully than a plague heart site.

EMBRACE THEE JANK

Yeah seems you have to rotate the view so the character (carefully) backs into the ladder.

I haven’t fallen off of a cell tower yet, but have somehow managed to fall off of a billboard multiple times. The last time I fell, I then watched my two followers fall off after me.

Being afraid of heights in real life, this is not helping.

Man, this game can be so bleak at times. My morale had been flying high until I got rid of my coffee stand (which adds morale) in order to claim an outpost that produces meds. Unfortunately, right after I did this I lost a bunch of other supplies to some random event that happened at base. After losing these supplies morale dropped to an all-time low and I’ve been struggling to raise it since. Things snowballed, and the issues began to pile up.

Because of my low morale, the group started in-fighting, causing other problems, costing me more supplies, and leading to the destruction of certain upgrades on the property.

I decided to nip this in the bud and exile a particularly problematic member, but that sucked because I knew I’d be more or less sentencing them to death. I think I was tapping in to @BrianRubin a bit here, because cutting her loose at this point felt a bit like sealing off sections of the ship in FTL and watching your crew die. Such decisions can be a little stressful, especially when she’d been so helpful before losing her mind. Who could blame her under these circumstances?

Another thing that really helps set the mood is the constant feedback from community members on their outlook on life, the way the music changes depending on the mood, and the dire radio messages from surrounding encampments. When I’m not in a position to simply be the hero and save everybody I feel like I’m letting the world down. And in that constant twisting of the knife, this game shines.

Thankfully I’ve upgraded my base and have managed to fix my on-going morale problem, now I just have to scour the area and see what the recently abandoned settlements left behind while I try to catch up with the runaway infestations.

And this is why I’ll never play this. ;)

This is how I can tell the game was developed in the Pacific Northwest. You take away the coffee, the world goes to hell. Zombies or not.

More like, take away the coffee and the world turns into zombies :)

Ha! Good ones.

You go girl, both of youse.

Seconded!

I think I’m an outlier here, but I am just not liking this game. I want to. I really did like the first one, but some of the things I didn’t care for in the original have come back doubly in this one. I have rage quit twice now, and can’t see going back in. Here’s my biggest complaints:

  • Respawning zombies. I get why they do it, but I just can’t be ok with it. It’s killing my immersion and making me quite frustrated. If I spend 10 minutes wiping out the zombies all around my base, then drive 1/4 mile down the road, turn around and come back, there should not be 6 zombies milling about around my base again. I guess I’m just too used to making progress in games now, and I really want to feel that every time I wipe out some zombies, I’m doing so. But when they just respawn every time you go a short distance, I never feel like any progress has been made at all.

  • Zombies spawning out of no where. Again this is one that happened in the original, but it’s just really bothering me this time. Every time I pull up the map while driving, and my car slows, here come 3 or 4 zombies out of thin air to jump on my car. Or if I go to clear a house and make sure to check all around the outside clearing zombies, as soon as I enter it, here come a bunch through the windows and doors. It’s just maddening.

  • Companions dying. This never really happened to me in SoD1, but twice now in this sequel while on a mission my companion has died during a fight. They were properly equipped, but just couldn’t fight well enough to fend off 3 or 4 zombies attacking them. Of course I’m dealing with my own 3 or 4 so I couldn’t really help. I’ve also had the character I was controlling die once too. I was in a situation where I couldn’t move, or jump or duck out of the way thanks to some weird hitbox issue.

  • Cars made of glass. I don’t recall this in 1, but I’ve had a few cars blow up on me now from running into a pole or something. Yeah, sure they should take damage and all, but not blow up from 1 crash. This is especially maddening given how slippery the cars are when turning.

  • Pacing. Again, not sure if it was like this in 1, but man I am so sick of getting 2 or 3 calls for help every time I set out to do something. It’s so frustrating. I choose a character who has a personal goal, and immediately upon hitting the road towards it, I get a bunch of whining over the radio that someone needs help. If I don’t go help, they get all butt-hurt and leave, costing me a potential ally or new companion. If I do run around and help all these people, my character gets worn out and never gets to start their personal quest.

  • The Jank. Oh the jank is so bad in this one. Why can’t I just pick up that rucksack on the ground? Why does my companion have to stand right over it, causing me to start dialogue with them when I just want to pick it up. Every time! Why do I have to play pixel hunt to find the appropriate spot to stand to refuel my car? Why do I have to stutter step near the top of the ladder to access it so I don’t plummet to my death?

I’m probably playing this all wrong, as so many of you seem to be really enjoying it. I’m just glad I got this in the Microsoft Game Pass thing, since there’s no refunds in M$ Store.

What do you mean? You can totally refund MS purchases.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10558/microsoft-account-refunds-for-purchases-and-subscriptions

No idea how they treat opened physical game discs, but:

Digital goods
Most apps, games, movies, TV shows, and books purchased in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 or Xbox One are non-refundable unless the offer or applicable law states that you’re eligible for a refund.

Yeah, I think I’m wrong. I’ve seen the option to request a refund but that may be because I’m in the insider program.

You can and have always been able to get a refund. the key is to call them, and not make a habit of it. The more you have bought in the past the more lenient they are on it, but basically the first time you call to try I would be very surprised if they don’t refund you.

I activated my game pass, and started this download.

But man, at the rate this is downloading from the Windows Store, it’s going to take all night, maybe even all weekend.

Maybe playing this on the PC tonight is not on the cards. I could download it on Xbox and try it there once the family goes to bed. Games of this size usually take less than 15 minutes to download on Xbox.

Appreciate your thoughts on the game. A lot of those things bother me too. The zombies that teleport into an area you just cleared seems really lazy to me. I’l wait on this one.

I haven’t played the second game, but I take issue with this as a criticism of the game. In the first one, you never controlled the map. The map was controlled by the corpses. But you got familiar with the layout of the land and the behaviour of its fauna, and eventually learned how to carve yourself a place into this world. Those times were you felt overconfident and got in over your head always meant some thrilling survival action.
Persistence and systematic eradication of the zombies would have made State of Decay a much different game, and one I wouldn’t have cared for.