State of Decay 2

2024-01-15
State of Decay 2 retains the winning formula of its predecessor continuing to cement its place in my mind as the best zombie survival game ever made. The only problem is it doesn't change that much from the original. It looks better, sounds better, has quality of life improvements, has more maps, allows you keep playing in a sandbox way without the problem of the original where once you exhausted the map you were on that was it. Now you can leave the map and go to a new one at any time. Plus you can send maxed out characters to a Legacy pool to tap in as heavy hitters in new communities later on. Cool! But fundamentally it's the same game. Once you start to max out your characters, have some good guns, and good supply of ammunition there's really no challenge left. The introduction of other NPC encampments is cool but they really just turn into a set of vendors to sell stuff and buy stuff.

I can see through the Legacy system and the fact that the game kept popping up notifications about limited time vendors and little vanity items you could collect that the devs tried to turn this into a long-term game you can play for hundreds of hours but in my mind you'll have had all the fun you'll have with the game in about 30-40 hours. But man what a great time it is in the meantime. I just wish they had done a little more.