State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition Review

Even after you’ve long learned not to come to snap judgements about games, it’s still possible to write a particular release off due to faults it contained or assumptions made on your part. Such was the case with my attitude toward the original Xbox 360 release of State of Decay. As much as I love zombie games—and am still searching for the perfect one that gets surviving a world filled with the undead just right—I walked away from my brief experience with Undead Labs’ first effort thinking it was a rough, undercooked, glitchy mess of good intentions and bad executions.

Countless positive stories from the player community about what truly awaited in State of Decay if you just gave it a chance made me wonder if my initial judgements about the game had been unfair—and finally giving it a full, proper play thanks to its Xbox One reworking proves that I was, indeed, wrong.

State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition has faults—some of which I’ll definitely call out—but along with those flaws comes some legitimately fun zombie-survival gameplay. Across the main game and its two included expansion modes, Breakdown and Lifeline, you begin the game as a singular character, who—along with an AI-controlled companion or two—tries to make sense of the chaos in the world around them. Everywhere you turn, the living dead walk the earth, and since you have a limited amount of supplies and a weak melee weapon that gets closer to breaking with every hit, your first goal is to find someplace safer in order to take stock of your situation and plan your next move.

In the original State of Decay, that means making it to the refuge of a church on the outskirts of a rural town nestled in the fictional Trumbull Valley. There, a group of survivors have set up a shelter, and as its newest resident, you’re tasked with proving your worth to the community by scavenging for supplies, clearing out zombie infestations, and helping recruit other survivors who are in the midst of danger out on their own.

With so many zombie-apocalypse games—both linear and open world—focusing on the “lone-wolf survivor” concept, State of Decay’s emphasis on growing and securing a community is definitely an interesting one. The colony won’t improve unless you put actual effort into it, and the others living there can get sick, leave, or even die depending on your management of resources and planning of facility improvements. Yes, members can indeed bite it in a variety of situations—even when, say, you’re miles away digging through the shelves of an abandoned supermarket and have no hope of making it back in time to help fend off the zombie horde that suddenly attacked your camp.

On more than one occasion, the sudden twists State of Decay threw at me felt utterly unfair—but they also helped build the idea of this truly being a world where I had to work hard to survive. As you rotate through the list of playable characters from your community, one misjudgement about your ability to deal with a large group of zombies could get that character killed. And, in State of Decay, once they’re gone, they’re gone for good, which can be an especially painful situation if they’re one of your favorite characters or somebody who played an important role in your community.

State of Decay’s deep focus on the building up and management of your colony of survivors really is a fresh twist on the genre, but it’s also one that can get in the way at times. I went into the game expecting to be let loose upon this hostile open world now almost completely devoid of its humanity, but between necessary storyline progression and the endless array of unexpected objectives that crop up, you’re constantly kept busy. Which, really, isn’t necessarily a negative thing overall, but the more I played, the most I wanted the chance to just go out and try to survive on my own—no pressure on what I needed to do or where I was directed to go next beyond whatever imminent threat I might find myself in.

That’s where I hoped the game’s first expansion, Breakdown, might satisfy my wants. Here, players are offered a more storyline-free sandbox version of State of Decay, where your movements and goals aren’t tied to the progression of a pre-set narrative. That promise sounded like a great counterbalance to the more rigid structure of the main game, but really, you’ll have almost as much pressure constantly bearing down on you to complete menial tasks or come to the aid of a group of survivors that you really have no choice but to join. The sense of true freedom to just see how long you can last on your own never comes into play, and that’s kind of a shame.

The second expansion to State of Decay, however, does a much better job of validating its existence. Lifeline is the tale of an army team trying to secure a military base and its surrounding area. With the shift to a new location, Danforth City, we’re given a much larger, complex, metropolitan playground in which to have fun. In terms of the location and atmosphere of making it through a zombie infestation, Lifeline was the more exciting option for me—even while the difficulty and pressures to run back and forth to knock out objectives cranked up noticeably.

Throughout my time with State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition, it was impossible to ignore the fact that the game has some pretty large faults—many of which I can’t help but blame on this being Undead Labs’ first project. Unstable framerate, zombies clipping into walls, and other technical issues or bugs still abound, even with the jump to the Xbox One and the improvements over what came before. Nearly everything about the community aspect feels underdeveloped, and while I know it’s the job of the player to accomplish most of what needs doing, in a game that’s so focused on you not being a lone hero, I couldn’t help but wish the other colony members felt more alive and useful when they weren’t under my direct control. And, yeah, combat is clunky at times, especially when you’re trying to deal with being surrounding by more than a couple of zombies—a situation you’ll, unsurprisingly, often find yourself getting into.

And yet—much like the undead hordes it contains as its villains—this is a game that refuses to lie down and die. For all of its faults, State of Decay also has awesome, thrilling, heart-wrenching, and engrossing moments. This is the epitome of the middle ground in gaming that’s become so lost in recent years, where it’s OK for a title to not be polished and perfect in every way as long as it can entertain. The game’s engine may not compete with the bigger-name releases out there, but its shortcomings never render it unplayable or unacceptable. Yeah, the community stuff could absolutely be better, but it’s also quite impressive at times in terms of the depth and thought that it does contain for a studio’s freshman project. And, sure, State of Decay’s combat can’t compete with the better-crafted beat-em-ups out there, but it’s also not bad once you get out of the mindset of just mashing the attack button until every zombie around you is on the ground dead (again).

The best part of State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition is how excited I am to see Undead Labs’ next zombie game. That may seem like a knock against what they’ve already got to show, but really, I feel that way because of how much promise they’ve woven throughout what’s here. While that promise isn’t always executed properly or given a full chance to shine, this is still a game I’d absolutely recommend to those who love the “what if?” scenarios of hellish undead outbreaks that video games can immerse us in—especially if, like me, you can be more forgiving of games that may not get everything right but at least show a lot of heart in their attempt.

B Good	While it never truly feels like it reaches its full potential or the promise Undead Lab’s ideas hold for the genre, State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition is still a fun, fascinating take on the tradition of zombie-apocalypse games that’s worth playing for hardcore fans.
State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition was reviewed using review code, physical copies, or hardware provided by Microsoft. Scores are graded on a scale of E (Bad) to S (Special) in homage to Japanese video game grading scales, with the understanding that an S still does not denote a "perfect" score. Scores may have been adjusted from the original source to better fit my personal scale.