State of Decay 2 Hands-On Preview

Hands-on impressions after nearly 10 hours with the final game

Around a week ago, Microsoft provided Super Jump with a review code for the upcoming State of Decay 2, an Xbox One/Windows exclusive due for release on May 22nd. This is arguably the second big Xbox exclusive game of 2018, following Sea of Thieves, which was released in March.

State of Decay 2 is a follow-up to the original State of Decay, which launched on Xbox 360 back in 2013. It might be worth pointing out that this new game isn’t really a sequel in the way we traditionally think about sequels (that is, a story which continues on from the first title). Rather, it’s best to think about State of Decay 2 as an entirely new thing that exists without reference to the first game. It’s almost as though the developers, Undead Labs, are starting from scratch.

I am planning to write a full review, which will contain a lot more detail about the experience. But for now, I thought I’d share my top Yay and Boo moments based on playing almost ten hours of the game so far. One caveat I must mention right away, too, is that I haven’t yet played an online cooperative session — so this preview is strictly related to the “offline” experience as it stands now.

Yay

Let’s start with the good stuff — the elements that are looking great, and that improve on the original 2013 release.

Offline progression is gone

Hallelujah! This was one of my biggest complaints about the original State of Decay. You’d spend all this time scrounging for resources, building up your outpost, and helping survivors…only to turn the game off, return a few days later, and find most of your community dead and the remainder on life support. Yuck. It just didn’t work; it was a system that, although conceptually cool, punished players who couldn’t spend every waking moment nurturing their community.

The feature is thankfully gone in State of Decay 2. You can save your game at any time, although if you quit mid-mission, you’ll essentially reset that mission. No big deal.

Because of this change, I’m feeling a lot less frustrated, and a lot more invested in the longer-term strategic planning around my community’s survival and development.

Plague Hearts and Plague Zombies

This is one of my favourite new additions to State of Decay 2. As you play the game, Plague Hearts will spawn in different locations around the map. Each Plague Heart is almost like a kind of boss — they take a lot of effort to destroy, and as you destroy each one, the next one becomes more resistant to your attacks.