State of Decay: Year One Edition on Xbox One – The DVDfever Review

State of Decayis back for another bite, this time as a Year One Edition. The rot this time is far less rotten.

So what’s new in this year one edition remaster? Well, the user interface has been tweaked to make it more intuitive. Everything falls to hand, such as moving left or right on d-pad to cycle through important inventory items, like pills for health and coffee for stamina. If memory serves me correctly, up on the d-pad invokes your characters profile. The developers, Undead Labs, have also managed to make the frame rate more stable. It now runs at 30 frames-per-second in 1080p…. except for when it doesn’t; there were a couple of times in the game where it would stutter, but this occurred far less frequently than the previous version. There are also new characters, new guns and vehicles too, along with a new mission style which has supply crates, dropped full of useful goodies on the map. Unfortunately, there’s an electronic voice declaring their presence, attracting a large number of un-dead, which makes getting those goodies tricky!

If your coming from Xbox 360 to Xbox One, then paying for the Year One Edition is a noticeable upgrade, but it’s a bigger pill to swallow, coming from PC to Xbox One as the changes to resolution and frame rate are more like optimising, which feels like they could have been delivered in a patch to the original game. (How many new games released on PC aren’t in 1080p?) I am somewhat confused by the upgrade to 1080p. I thought the original State of Decay was 1080p anyway (So I went back and checked loading up Breakdown to find I could select 1920×1080 in the options on the original PC version!), so having to buy the whole game again feels a little unfair, although you are offered a small discount if you already own the previous version. To add further incentive to purchase the game again, you can also import your save from your non-optimised version of the game to continue your fight in the definitive version.

The character animations have been tweaked along with the textures. Some vehicles now sport more outlandish paint jobs rather than the mundane ones found in the original. Even with the developer’s efforts to give it a new lick of paint, on loading up State of Decay, I have to admit I was hard pushed to tell the difference, having come from the original PC version rather than the Xbox 360. I had to go back again and check the PC version, and it was only then I found, yes, the Xbox One does like nicer – it’s more polished, the rough edges have been chipped away, the textures are more detailed, the light effects are more intricate and some cars sport shiny reflective surfaces; smoke effect are better too. So Undead Labs have clearly put the effort in when you look for it – it’s just that it still doesn’t reach the graphical heights of its peers. For all Undead Labs’ efforts, there are still graphical glitches like zombies sticking through a closed door, clipping and pop up when driving along, but then at £19.99 for all the content and great gameplay, surely it can be excused. It’s certainly not an ugly game when all is said and done.

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State of Decay Day One Edition Part 1 – “I Did My Homework Guys!!!” 1080p PC Gameplay – Generikb

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What makes the biggest impression is the game itself? Don’t get me wrong – we all want great graphics, but if there’s ever a game where you should forgive the graphics not matching the likes of GTA V, then this is one such example.

Ah there, I’ve said it – GTA V. State of Decay can be compared to the king of sandbox games, and on paper it doesn’t fare well, only offering a single-player experience and not having access to a huge budget to dip into during development, and this title already stretching Cryteks’ Cryengine 3 to the limit, but when you’re driving along an open road and you find your path blocked by… what the hell is that? Landing gear?! …forcing you to cut in to a field to swerve round it, only to see a crashed jumbo jet still burning and with zombies milling in the vicinity as if they are the passengers from the plane, you just don’t care because you realise your playing something special in its own right.

So you would be doing State of Decay – and yourself – a great injustice if you dismiss it out of hand because it doesn’t look as pretty as some of its peers.

This may be a sandbox game, but it beats it own drum. You would be wise to take a more measured approach to the game; erring on the side of caution will see you surviving a lot longer. Unlike GTA V, the Fighting is intense and can go South quickly. Taking on four zombies on your own can see your stamina drain making your blows ineffective… especially if you were carrying a heavy load back to your car when the zombies beset upon you. Even if you make It into the car and get moving, if a zombie manages to hang on to your car, they can pull you out, back into the eager hands of their undead brethren. Get it REALLY wrong and there’s perma death. Levelling a character up, then taking a needless shortcut across a field and flipping your car to find zombies bearing down on you is a risk, and losing your character because of a GTA V moment is devastating. I know, because that’s how I felt when I lost – I set about making the inbound zombies’ death final second time around. Hacking and slashing, avoiding their lunges, but there were too many and my stamina was waning. I foolishly tried to run, which was futile due to my stamina situation. As the zombies tore in to me, I desperately tried to pull the power lead from my Xbox one but to no avail. My character was zombie chow!

There is no second chance, extra life or continues. You just have to choose another survivor and start the process of levelling them up again.

You will eventually set up a camp for you and your fellow survivors. This is where the strategy comes into play – you will need to scour the local area for resources so you can improve the base. Finding building supplies, fuel, medicine and food all helps keep your fellow survivors happy and healthy. Improve the base, though, and you can become self-sufficient. Build a workshop to repair cars or a medical facility to help your survivors heal at a faster rate and make your own medicines.

Then there are the missions that pop up. You’re often faced with choices – take one mission and you may run out of time to complete the other, losing the opportunity to see if any new survivors would have joined your party. This can make the gameplay slightly different each time you play through, as you may see a different cut-scene if you complete a mission you missed the first time (Not that completing all missions triggers a cut-scene). I completed State of Decay on the pc and loved it. Playing again on Xbox One and seeing different survivors as I was picking up different missions from my first play through, made the game feel fresh to me. One such mission was defending a house from a zombie siege with two brothers. This was a great mission, trying to fend off the zombies smashing the through your boarded-up windows and throwing Molotov cocktails at them to thin their ranks. This was also my first encounter, this play through, with a Juggernaut who came charging through the front door to wreak havoc. I never did this mission on my first play through on PC, and it was nice to see what I missed. While you’re under siege, the pressure trying to sift quickly through your inventory to swap out a weapon that’s about to break, whilst hearing those moans getting ever closer, is immense and the UI tweaks definitely helped make selecting much needed health easier.

When you’re out on a scavenging mission, you’re always having to manage your inventory. Carry enough supplies and weapons in case your meet overwhelming odds, and having enough inventory slots to carry items you find. You can call back to Base to have someone collect your loot but you risk them being attacked too.

Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the game, plus conclusions.

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State of Decay Day One Edition Part 2 – “Smoked Oysters?!?” 1080p PC Gameplay – Generikb

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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.

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State of Decay Day One Edition Part 3 – “FERAL ZOMBIE ATTACK!!!” 1080p PC Gameplay – Generikb

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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.

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State of Decay Day One Edition Part 4 – “ZOMBIE INFESTATION!!!” 1080p PC Gameplay – Generikb

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Important info:

• Publisher: Microsoft
• Players: 1
• HDTV options: up to 1080p
• Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes

GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY POTENTIAL	7 7 9 8
OVERALL	8