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State of Decay 2 is a survival horror game set in an open world during a zombie apocalypse. You're in charge of managing survivors, finding and managing resources for your base, and keeping yourself and everyone else safe from zombies.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Online co-op with friends makes the game more fun and strategic
Four-player co-op online with friends is great. You all get to work together to plan your next move, gather resources, and protect your base by killing zombies. The third-person shooter gameplay shines as you work cooperatively, since you can watch each other's blind spots to take out any enemies that might catch someone off guard. You can also pull off more strategic moves, like coordinating fire strikes to distract zombies, while another person hurries to collect the resources in an area. Working as a team lets you accomplish more and experience the game in a way that the single-player mode just doesn't offer.
Pro Good price of $29.99 USD at release
State of Decay 2 is priced well at launch at only $29.99. Even better, with the Xbox Game Pass, you can get the game for only $10 on either PC or your Xbox console. This is great for anyone who doesn't want to shell out the usual $59.99 for a retail game as soon as it's released.
Pro Open-ended approach to managing your base, resources, and survivors
You have the freedom to make choices in State of Decay 2 that determine how things turn out for your operations. You're tasked with taking care of groups of survivors during a zombie apocalypse, so that means gathering food and other resources to keep your people and your base safe.
When you know you're about to exhaust all the resources in one area, you have to decide if you want to keep your base in what's probably a safe location away from zombies, at the cost of having to cross more distance to find materials in the future. Or if you do move your base to a resource-rich location, you may end up getting swarmed by zombies more often, and potentially losing your survivors. These types of moment-to-moment choices end up having a big impact down the line, making each of your gameplay sessions unique.
Pro Excellent performance
Everything runs well at solid framerates on both console and PC. If you're on the Xbox One X, or if you have a high-end PC at max settings, you'll hardly notice any stuttering or FPS issues. The regular Xbox One and mid-tier PCs also run the game quite well.
Cons
Con Not for players who dislike micromanaging small details
If you don't like keeping track of resources and other necessities that come along with base-building games, then State of Decay 2 probably isn't for you. Your main objective is keeping your survivors alive and your base thriving, meaning you have to scavenge the open world for food and materials, make sure your peoples' needs are met, and a lot of other similar tasks. Finding and allocating resources is what makes or breaks your group and your operations, so if you hate keeping track of things like that, then you may not want to pick this game up.
Con Buggy
There are some random bugs that pop up during gameplay. They're mostly physics-based, with zombies dropping down from the sky as they spawn, or vehicles tipping over and flipping around for no apparent reason. Some of them are pretty funny and aren't too detrimental, but they still make the game look and feel unpolished. A few patches from the devs should iron out these issues.
Con No dedicated servers for online play
Not having dedicated servers makes online play hit-or-miss. The peer-to-peer connection means that one player in the lobby acts as the "host" for your game. If the host's individual connection is bad, then everyone in the lobby suffers with possible rubberbanding and packet loss. You'll be fine as long as the host's connection is okay, but if not, then you're out of luck. It would have been better to have dedicated servers to avoid these awkward issues.
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