Recent reviews by Saunders

State of Decay is thrilling. You're dropped into a zombie infestation and forced to manage your resources and survivors. There are various missions that pop up alongside to main story and if you ignore them your survivors can get injured or die. The zombies are easy enough to deal with, but if you're out on your own and you make too much noise you can find yourself being swarmed by all sides. A few lucky grapples by the zombies can leave you in an undead dogpile, slowly being torn to shreds. Once a character is dead it is gone forever.

There have been times where I find myself surrounded and being beat down, and after barely knocking them off I stumble towards a car out o breath, zombies running after me and trying to grab me. One bite away from death I get into the car and drive off with several zombies hanging on banging at the doors. I can't remember the last time a game has made my heart race so much. There is so much character development and macro management in this game that you really feel like you're "surviving" rather than adventuring.

Now for the flaws. The game is riddled with bugs. It's annoying to be heading into a dangerous area only to have your partner teleport back to base for an "Angry resident" mission. The zombies often clip through walls and into the floor. Sounds don't always play and cars can get damaged on invisible bumps. But none of the bugs are really gamebreaking and they're easy to shrug off. The resource management part of the game is too simple. There's supposed to be some sort of resource usage where some of your food/ammo/medicine are used up each day, but it seems like I'm always at max resources and the only thing I ever NEED to gather is building supplies for more upgrades at base. Because of this there's always more than enough time to do every side mission and there's no sense of urgency in the game.

A few minor tweaks could make the game so much more difficult and so much more exciting. Side missions should force you to choose between saving a survivor or gathering necessary resources (think XCOM). Outposts should require a person there to be useful (instead of giving resources and killing zombies as an autonomous house), making you trade labor for safety. Resources should decay faster so you actually have to spend time scavenging inbetween or during missions. There are a limited amount of resources on the map but I haven't even come close to depleting them all. Before I moved my base to a new town I still had unsearched houses a two minute walk away.

Overall the mechanics of the game are solid. THe game is enjoyable and exciting. With a few tweaks to make it harder could make it a game of the year. If you're thinking about buying it, buy it. If you'e not, buy it anyway.

Amazing game. If you like aliens, get it. If you like strategy, get it. If you want to have fun whether you win or lose, get it.

In fact, unless you need that last $30 to live then get this game.

Best game ever. Seriously.