I’m eight or so hours into State of Decay

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“ Harrowingly, you can realistically only run for a short time before you’re gassed and have to stop for breath.

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State of Decay is living up to its name in every sense of the word, and through it all I am absolutely in love with it.It is not a game borne of this Golden Age of tutorials and hand-holding. You are no superhuman zombie slayer, armed to the teeth with a stockpile of firearms and a recharging health meter. Death is both imminent and permanent, and venturing away from the (relatively) safe confines of your home base at night is downright terrifying.Yes, State of Decay is an open-world zombie survival game, but what’s not obvious right away – and glorious once you plumb its depths – is that it’s a full-blown role-playing game. A fantastic one at that. Switching back and forth between one of several player characters, you’ll travel across the multi-town desert region recruiting new survivors, searching vacated shops and houses for supplies, and managing relationships with the people you encounter – both those in your party as well as other humans you’re not aligned with.Health is scarce, the zombies can move as fast as you once alerted, and most harrowingly, you can realistically only run for a short time before you’re gassed and have to stop for breath. And you’ll have to scrounge for whatever you can, both in terms of weapons (pipe wrenches, hatchets, and hockey sticks along with guns, too) and transportation. Both your offensive arsenal as well as your cars (which, of course, also double as formidable weapons themselves; Pro tip: speed by one just off to your left and press X to open the driver’s door. It’s a satisfying swat.) degrade over time, necessitating repair or replacement. Delightfully, it means you can never rely on one great sidearm or one useful truck the whole time. The more damage you do, the quicker you’ll need to find another way to deal it. This keeps your eyes open and the tension high, particularly when you’re searching a house for resources; make too loud a noise and all of a sudden a throng of zombies will barrel forth as you try anything and everything to escape alive without being enveloped by the horde.Speaking of options, you’re likely to gravitate towards one or two playable characters, mostly because you can level-up their core skills like Cardio (running), Wits (searching and sneaking), Fighting, Shooting, and others by doing them. That’s what made Shayla’s unexpected death all the more painful; I lost all of her accrued skill points and weapon specialty bonuses.In fact, at one point shortly after Shayla died, I was down to just three survivors. Because two of them weren’t designated as “Friends,” though, I couldn’t switch to them to allow my new avatar, Anderson, to rest. So I was forced to, well, survive, popping Codeine to heal my wounds and chugging coffee to replace the stamina I was continually losing from the fatigue. I endured all this while also struggling to make enough supply runs to keep everything at base running smoothly and building up enough Influence to spend on putting out radio calls in the hopes of recruiting new survivors.Eventually, though, I recovered, keeping group morale high enough where nobody fled. And indeed there’s a bit of a learning curve to State of Decay. I lost two survivors in the first couple hours because I underestimated the speed and viciousness of a single zombie horde. You simply must take out the undead individually in order to successfully defeat them. A stealthy approach, thanks to insta-kill moves pulled off by maneuvering behind a Zed undetected, can be a powerful ally.Like fellow brilliant zombie success The Walking Dead from Telltale, Decay’s technical shortcomings – its jankiness – are what hold it back from immortality. Besides the aforementioned framerate and clipping problems, I also encountered constant texture pop-in issues as well as one stretch where none of my character’s weapons were visible in her hands - nothing that ever broke the game, but certainly annoying.Decay’s only other missteps are minor. The plotline is engaging and sets up a great finale, but it falls a bit short due to a lack of tough choices, such as the ones you had to make in The Walking Dead. And while it may seem unfair to criticize a game for nonexistent features, you can’t help but daydream about the fascinating possibilities and adventures that a cooperative mode could’ve laid bare – especially when State of Decay’s creators have publicly stated that they originally planned to included it and hope (not “plan,” hope) to still add it via a post-release patch.