State of Decay 2 (2018)

I regularly think about this game and after seeing the Nextlander crew jump into it I finally decided to get back in. And I still love it. It feels this is a run based game in disguise, but with permadeath, since each time you go out you have to decide how far you push it.

The Juggernaut update is great, with tons of quality of life improvements and finally a real reason to go after the plague hearts (zombie epicenters) since they prevent you from taking over outposts.

I am convinced this is one of the games that will benefit in the coming years from improvements to AI directed storytelling (like the nemesis system). I am hoping we see more individualized narrative games in the future such that the game will react to your choices and create content for you.

Finally “beat” this game. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The combination of looting and combat and base management was enough to keep me really engaged. I am hopefully that DLC or another full version of the game will continue to iterate and make it better.

Ideas I liked: The open world nature with events that expire. Buildings with random loot that you need to investigate. Loot doesn’t come back forcing you go farther and farther away as time goes on. Random factions that ask for help. If you don’t help someone out then they may turn against you or simply leave. Constantly having to decide when to push the risk/reward for more loot. Characters get injured so they can’t regain their full stamina or health and you must rest them. You can wreck your car and get stuck far from base, which makes for neat emergent gameplay.

Not so great things: There are far too many systems without much explanation in the beginning. Switches bases feels like it should be a major event with a convoy or other risk/reward. There is no reward for taking on the juggernauts. Feels like there should be some riskier missions that have better rewards. Pretty buggy.

I am really digging this game now. It was tough to penetrate in the beginning with all the systems and mods and competing demands. I actually managed to get through some tough times with my community: running out of medicine, morale very low, driving around nearly out of fuel trying to scavenge for items. I decided to help another group of survivors only to have them turn on me and kill my only doctor. The silver lining was that we killed them and took their medicine, thus alleviating one problem. This chaos was like something out of the Walking Dead and made me really dig the game.

Ultimately there is an intriguing narrative all driven by my actions and what I choose to do.