Recent reviews by Aussie Jim

After playing games like Just Survive and DayZ, I was pretty keen on trying out an open world zombie survival game with a story. Unfortunately, my desire wasn't exactly fulfilled with this experience.


I'll start with the zombies. They're more annoying than anything they're supposed to be. It's like no matter if you've cleared hordes of them or spots where they're infesting, they'll be back there once the area is out of your sight. The game indicates that if you clear infestations, the zombies in that area will die down. It never felt that way and made killing zombies less rewarding. The zombies themselves are quite weak on their own unless they're with a special zombie or in groups. Half of the special zombies aren't anything special to begin with. The Armored zombie is pointless. The Fat and Feral zombies are the only challenging zeds. Most of the zeds are very persistent in chasing you down as well but they can be easily lost by hiding in a bush which can be convenient at times.

The survival aspect is bare bones. The two primary things you need to keep an eye on are your health and stamina. I found with most playable characters that no matter what their cardio was at, their stamina would drop too fast. Once you're out of stamina too (after fighting approx. 3-4 zeds) and you got a zombie on your ass, best believe it's game over for that character. You can also work on your fighting skill too but I found that barely useful since no matter what, it still took 5 hits to down a zombie with the odd 1-2 hits every now and then knocking down one. The game also has character traits which worked quite well. Often times you'd have characters with negative traits stirring up trouble and if they did it was best to kick 'em out of the camp because you've been called over the radio three times to help calm that character down. However, it felt dull at the same time. Angry? Lets go kill some zombies. Sad? Lets kill more zombies. Scared? Get your shotgun. No matter the situation it was always killing zombies with the same dialogue too. There were no attempts of character development or unique stories to unlock.

State of Decay's Trunbull County was a nice map to explore. There were plenty of opportunities to loot and find new camp members throughout the county. The towns were large enough to loot from, with the countryside having houses and shops dotted here and there along the way. I finished the story mode by only looting the church town which should give some perspective of how many opportunities you have in just one town. Lifeline's Danforth City was different. It's a large freeway with some exits that house some opportunities for loot and zeds. There's also some tunnel systems with infestations that add some thrilling elements into the game. Out of the two, Trunbull County was better to explore. Danforth City almost felt linear.

Base building in the game was interesting. Every real time day that you login to play SOD the resources get used. Not many resources get used per day either so the game doesn't boot you out into the map to go hunting for more resources everyday. The upgrades offer a wide variety of perks and not every base can house every upgrade or facility either. The game pretty much provides you with that decision of where and what type of base you should build. I got through the game fine with the church and it's necessary upgrades. At no time did I have to rely on the base's perks either because I preferred to hunt for whatever I needed. Lifeline's base resources were used each time after a siege broke out. Speaking of siege's as well, they were annoying. It bugged out one time where the siege ended but the game didn't transition back to normal. I had to drive away from the base to fix the issue. The siege's were very repetitive too. The zombies would only go to the same two spots and always attack them in the same order each time.

The driving in the game is one of the worst driving experiences I've ever had with a game. Firstly the car audio is terrible. When you think you're going fast, the car just sounds like it's just accelerated. If the cars in the game could talk, they'd be monotone. The physics as well are awkward. The cars when moving around feel stagnant and robotic. If you brake with a fast car when going top speed, it comes to a complete stop the moment you tap on the brakes. It should just gradually come to a stop but that doesn't seem to happen.


Even though SOD has a story, it's not exactly clear. The game directs you to meet and work with lots of characters but very few of them have stories to tell. To complete the game, the only story you'll need to focus on is Sgt. Erik Tan's storyline. It would've made more sense if the story focused on Lily and the church prospering. With my playthrough, I had encounters where I thought we're gonna have to kill an evil person but that wasn't the case at all. I haven't looked online either to see if it's possible. I didn't finish the Lifeline story to give a full opinion of it but from my playthrough so far, it's your standard find the cure storyline. The story missions weren't always available either. Sometimes your map would only show the same repetitive side missions you can do to help new survivors, kill a special zed or clear out an infestiation to kill time until some dialogue prompted a new story mission to appear. Your map also wouldn't differentiate between a story mission and a side mission either and at times you're left wondering if that mission is important enough to do. There is some replayability value to see how some of the stories pan out because there are some alternate decisions that can be made.


Straight off the bat, the graphic options are extremely limited. You can tweak what level of graphics you want, and select whether or not you want V-Sync and Motion Blur on/off. That's really all I can remember. Being an older game and myself having a 970 GTX, I figured I could run it between High and Ultra just fine. The game's poor optimization unfortunately doesn't allow that. The most common issue is driving at full speed. Sometimes the FPS will drop significantly out of nowhere. The game isn't graphically demanding either, it almost looks cartoonish enough to be a spinoff Telltale Walking Dead game.


I really didn't want to hate on this game because I went in with enthusiasm after I bought it and watched some gameplay. Unfortunately I was left disappointed only to the point where I gave up midway through the Lifeline DLC because there's just too many issues inhibiting my progress through the story. Best believe I wanted to give up through the main story but I stuck through it to try get my money's worth. From my understanding, this was previously an early access title and to me it still feels that way. The game is unpolished and it's a shame because this is a super cool concept but it was executed poorly. Only pick this game up if it's on sale and you're curious about the legacy of State of Decay before/after you play the sequel.

The next best thing in eSports

It's a good game.

Buggy but playable.

Better than Call of Duty