Quick Look: State of Decay 2

It's Zed O'Clock

Im watching this to take a break from my save, this game is great but boy does it feel like you cant do anything right sometimes.

I kinda hate how boring this looks but brads party of misery at the beginning intrigued me

This just seems very tedious. I want something more in the game play loop to stand out and be a good reason to keep going out besides numbers but it doesn't seem like it has anything more to it.

It is comforting to know there are still sandwiches in our dark future.

I'll probably re-up Gamepass for a month to give it a shot. $30 isn't bad. Hell, even an additional $20 for both DLC and the first game isn't terrible.

When I watched the videos for 1 and the earlier playdate for 2, I just couldn't understand WHY anyone liked it. That said, I didn't pay attention very much because the first glimpse I saw made it look like a really boring kill the zombies game in a landscape where there's too many zombie games.

Hearing Brad and Will describe it as The Sims with Zombies and now watching this Quick Look more closely and with more interest, I totally get it now and will probably try it via Gamepass' free trial.

Brad, please for the love of God read the effing quest goals. They're on the upper right of your screen.

I could watch brad play through this entire game.

What would be the fun in that?

Jorgensen (I think?) sounded a bit like Trevor from GTA5 in places.

State of Decay

State of DK

State of Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong Country

I actually want Brad and Ben play more of this

At the end of day, this has a heavy management sim portion, dealing with items, stats, counters.. That may or may not be your thing.

I used to play Championship Manager (predecessor of FM) when it was just spreadsheets and the soccer action was described through pure text. If anything this has too much action for my taste.

I'm going to assume that Brad is playing this at the UPF tonight.

I don't understand why i'm so interested in this game when this checks all the boxes for things Spencer hates in games.

My main question in determining whether I'm interested in this game is whether things are less miserable if you actually display initiative in pursuing quest objectives instead of dithering aimlessly as Brad does.

I really don't understand why people call the first game "dense and impenetrable" it really wasn't that bad, it was an open world action survival game with a few base building elements there are far more complex games that are mainstream. My 6 year old brother played state of decay and he wasn't overwhelmed in the least.

@thefizz said:

It's the idea of rebuilding a home and community in this shithole garbage land that's gone to hell that provides drive to me. I like working towards creating the good life, the feeling of prevailing hope. The sense of valuing what you've built and accomplished is also what makes you invested and not want things to go bad.

The potentially additional thing of interest with this game over the first one is the interactions with other groups of people, and the seemingly more detailed simulation of your own people. There's potential for dynamic stuff to grow out of that.

If this game doesn't succeed at providing you any of the above, then it might very well feel like tedious numberfarming.

@veektarius: You love to say Brad and dither ;)

"Oh, weird, I got someone up to Hero. My main quest right now is to get someone to Hero level so I can choose a leader. I wonder if I can just do that now. Oh well..."

@ripelivejam: Yeah but for how long?, FOR HOW LONG!!?

@veektarius: Yeah i think brad is experimenting and trying everything, which i bet is not the right way to succeed in the long run. Sacrifices will have to be made, perhaps he has too many people.

Don't be silly. Using the UI is just not the Giantbomb way.

I wanna watch Brad play more of this but his lack of focus on any one thing is infuriating hahahaha.

This looks like a game I would play in a nightmare. Def not for me, but it looks like it could be fun for people who like management etc. Not for me though. Fun quick look, I did enjoy it. =)

@brad, I would love, love, LOVE if (when you get a chance) you could set up a cross-coast SoD2 co-op live stream with the BEasters (and the BWest...ers). As others said, online play is one of the most-touted features in this second interation of the series. :)

@nach0sanchez:

I agree. I didn't play the first game until early this year on PC remaster. I didn't find it too tedious or overwhelming. And I really really enjoyed myself. So much so, that once I heard that this new game was mostly a mechanical upgrade of the first one, I stopped playing in anticipation for the sequel.

Yes, there are a lot of mechanics that weren't fully explained, but they could be easily understood through simply engaging with them.

I think there are two different types of people when approaching games; ones who are afraid to fail and therefore feel anxiety over if they are "playing correctly", and people like myself who aren't afraid to fail and therefore are allowed to see first-hand how the mechanics work.

I've found that 9 times out of 10, there is no real, unrecoverable, consequence to "failure" in most games(or in life). You may just have to change-up your approach/strategy/expectations and attack form a different angle.

I may have to spend the $50 to start playing this tonight... didn't really want to do that.

I haven't put a lot of time into this just yet but so far it's scratching my "scavenging/surviving as a form of progression" itch that I have with open world games with ruined landscapes. From reviews it sounds like it will have less of a linear story like the first game which is unfortunate. Having an ok story usually means it will at least have linear goals with an interesting and authored through line something I was hoping they would do for the sequel.

But having procedurally created goals revolving around base creation and upkeep has been adequate for what I'm looking for in this type of game.

If the shoe fits...

Would love to see you guys play more of this.

For a minute there I was worried Brad was about to head out without curing the other plague victim because he got distracted haha.

its a bummer this is only on windows 10. I dont want to update my pc. wonder if they will port it to windows 7?

Hahaha I totally forgot they took along Tom, those random guys had already been great fun in the first game. There you could also claim to "help" them and then take them along for some zombie clearing, that's how you get to run around with 3+ characters.

@craftxiii: If you have the year-one edition of the first game you might wanna give it's Lifeline DLC a play. It's thematically a bit different (focus on a military outpost in an urban area) and has a rather different gameplay loop focusing less on resource management and more on base defense.

Should give you something to keep you busy till you get 2, without burning yourself out too much on exactly the same gameplay.

I really liked the first game. I think this could be my jam

Heard elsewhere it's supposed to be bug-ridden as fucc? No word of it here and I didn't notice anything neither.

Oh it's a technical mess alright, but I'm having a blast playing it. I dumped supplies into the trunk of my truck then the truck spun in the air for 5 seconds and became a polygon nightmare of shapes, but I could still drive it fine. I hit a barricade and the truck became invisible for the rest of my session. Doors regularly looked closed or open, but have prompts to do the opposite. Small white or orange horizontal lines appear and disappear on the screen. Zombies will rag doll when they die with a high chance their corpse comically somersaults into the sky.....I could go on and on...

Brad i love you but you make my heart pound when you go into menu's when you're under attack. This happened in City of Brass as well :D

I saw some weird lightning stuff happening in the cutscene at the end of this video. Seems like the shadow just keeps changing? Focus on the girl's clothes. Oh well, the actual gameplay looks smooth & solid enough to give it a pass.

i wish this game was available for purchase on the Sony Playstation 4 Entertainment Console.

This looks like more of the same for better or worse. Loved the first game but it was traumatizing to watch my best squad member, who seemed indestructible for the entire game, just get ripped in half right in front of me.

@breq: that is wild and hilarious. I've been SUPER lucky so far. Just some weird issues with my flashlight from time to time that go away after turning it on and off (although I've probably jinxed myself).

Last night I couldn't get a follower to help me with missions. Turns out I already had a follower that wasn't showing up in the world, but DID show up as a little icon on the mini map moving around like it was there. WEIRD STUFF, lol.

Seems like a better Metal Gear Survive in some ways. I actually enjoyed parts of that game until it got really grindy and the playerbase dried up...but it helped me realize I like some more fiddly systems driven type of games. Been playing Frostpunk which I thought was way outside my wheelhouse, and I'll probably pick this up once I'm done with GoW.

Characters named Anselmo and Jourgensen and not one mention of Pantera or Ministry? Sure, Ministry was overrated and Phil Anselmo may be a racist scumbag but...shit, I think I just answered my own question.

I can't wait for this to come out on a platform I want to actually buy games on.

@eccentrix: "I'm going to sit on that for a second until we get to the better base."

He's aware. Don't worry.

@breq: Goddamn, thanks for letting me know!

such as...steam? that's literally the only other place this can and most likely will come out on

Well, Ben said it was "dense and impenetrable." Given that he asked in the Unfinished if State of Decay 2 could be paused by pressing the PlayStation button, I'd take his comments with a grain of salt, since he wasn't even familiar enough with the series to know what system it is on.