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In State Of Decay, you should perfect reversing vehicles since the cars last far longer, and cars in the town are another finite resource. Driving around, plunging through stuff and creating wrecks, al a GTA V, will see you with no cars at all, soon enough, and you don’t want that as the easiest way to take out a zombie horde is to reverse through them, swing the car round with a J-turn and then take out any stragglers. Be wary of the bigger stronger zombies known as freaks, though. One such freak zombie – the Juggernaut – as mentioned earlier, will see your tyres blowing out on impact even if reversing at them. There are different types of freak zombies that extra caution should be shown to these include:
- Screamer: these are the first freaks you’re likely to meet. Easily identifiable by being bald, topless and armless. Armless maybe; harmless? Definitely not! Their scream calls nearby zombies, putting you in a sticky predicament if you are injured without a vehicle and desperately trying to make it back to base. Their scream can also incapacitate you for a few seconds – again disastrous when you have incoming zombies. Thankfully, these are easily mowed down if you happen to be in a vehicle.
- Juggernauts: A massively over weight zombie who, in life, spent most of it frequenting fast food joints (or they had a slow thyroid/metabolism – take your pick of the excuses!) If these zombies get in close for an attack and get hold of you, then depending on your health, they can rip you in half! Given the perma-death thing this sucks!
- Bloaters: Tall and bloated with spindly limbs these get in close and explode leaving the vicinity covered in a poisonous gas that reduces your health. Lethal if your already taking hits from normal Zombies. Don’t mow these down in a vehicle as they will explode not only damaging the health of all those years riding in the vehicle. The vehicle remains toxic fro a time continuing to drain he health of all those in the vehicle.
- Feral: if there’s such thing possible as an athletic zombie this is it. Though not impossible to kill with a vehicle they can evade a vehicle. If you come face to face with one they can pounce on you, knocking you to the floor. If you don’t get them off you quickly, they will literally chew you in half. I faced one of these in a room with a screamer who had glitched through the floor behind an open door. I couldn’t see it but it’s scream kept incapacitating me, allowing the Feral to pounce – a particular lethal combination. Once free I took to ran for dear life too afraid to re-enter for fear of losing my character! This glitch could have cost me my character and with perma-death ever present that’s the type of stuff you would have hoped had been ironed out of this “Definitive” version.
- Swat: These zombies are slightly trickier to kill due to their armour. Sidearm bullets tend to be deflected by what they are wearing. They never run and these dude crush under the wheels of your reversing car like regular old zombies.
- Army: Similar to the Swat zombie, except these buggers are quick!
Certain missions will find you under siege in a house for instance whilst trying to befriend some survivors. Nailing boards to the windows to barricade will only delay an onslaught for a few seconds but may give you enough time to shoot them as they pound on the boards to break through. The zombies become more enraged at night, their eyes glowing in the dark and their attacks more vicious. This is strictly a single player experience and that’s a crying shame. If you could bring a friend along to have your back when out scavenging, a human player would not only be cool but a great help when you’re trying to lug an overloaded rucksack back to base. Not having a human compatriot to help adds to that whole tension thing State of Decay has going on though. A.I. can be hit and miss – the Non-Player Character tagging along with you, failing to wade in until you do or getting stuck in the environment, other times they will go charging in and even hold a zombie for you to take them out with one blow. The NPCs tend to repeat what they have to say alarmingly quick saying the same things again and again start to grate.
State of Decay Day One Edition Part 3 – “FERAL ZOMBIE ATTACK!!!” 1080p PC Gameplay – Generikb
In the package, there’s State of Decay plus the two DLC packages which were released – Breakdown & Lifeline. State of Decay and Lifeline have a story and sees you as better-prepared soldiers, having to go out and complete missions but facing repeated attacks on your base but those pesky un-dead, whereas Breakdown basically has you seeing how long you can survive, scavenging and trying to keep everyone happy along the way as the game gets more and more difficult the longer you survive. Effectively, Breakdown can be played forever.
The preppers pack a camouflage vehicle, a gun and an axe seem like an after thought. Consider it a small bonus rather than a reason to buy and it’s ok, though, right?
They completely nailed the sound in the game. Apart from the repetitive nature of the NPCs, the various howls, screams, groans and moans of the zombies along with the tense music at appropriate moments all add to the atmosphere.
This game is currently £19.99 on Xbox market place. If you’ve never played it before then, despite its imperfections, you should buy this. None of the faults are deal-breakers and I can whole heartily recommend that you add this to your collection there’s so much game in there and for all it’s faults it a must have game. It’s a different take on the usual runaround, ploughing through zombies and it’s all the better for it. If you already own this on Xbox 360 then there’s still a valid reason to buy it – the upgrade to the games visuals and tweaking in general certainly make it the definitive version to play.
Thanks to Generikb for the gaming footage featured.
State of Decay is out now on Xbox One.
State of Decay Day One Edition Part 4 – “ZOMBIE INFESTATION!!!” 1080p PC Gameplay – Generikb
Important info:
- Publisher: Microsoft
- Players: 1
- HDTV options: up to 1080p
- Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes
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GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY POTENTIAL |
7 7 9 8 |
| OVERALL | 8 |
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