What's the consensus on State of Decay? Every same I add it to the cart but inevitably end up removing it. Right now it's pretty
cheap on HB but it's not really a question of how expensive it is and more if it's worth the time investment.
OK, let's talk State of Decay!
I played it back before the YOSE edition was released, but I own all the DLC!
Main game:
Story is your classic "Ahh zombies! What to do? Military acting suspicious!"
Nothing groundbreaking, but the way you interact with the systems of the game is cool.
Eventually you get to choose your survivor from your safe house (permadeath exists) and use them to explore and scavenge whatever materials you need / build outposts filled with traps / continue the story missions. This survivor will get tired/hurt and needs to be swapped out with another from your base, so you can continue exploring. Hence, you need to equip several characters and stock your base's equipment locker with all kinds of equipment.
Your characters are regular humans, they will tire quickly and cannot kill zombies indefinitely. Running away or sneaking is often a valid option.
The safe house can be improved with different rooms (workshops /beds etc) and different characters have different abilities that can help (chef/botanist/gubmaker etc).
You can and will move your safe house between several possible buildings during gameplay.
Now, all these systems in play are quite interesting. So what are the bad parts?
A weirdly implemented real-time system, were the game supposedly plays itself when you do not play.
so when you shut off for the night, and get back a week (real-time) later, rations might be consumed, characters might be away or missing etc. How much this affects the game can be discussed, and the developers claim that they have patched it to be forgiving if you leave the game for extended periods of time.
This "real-time" aspect can be turned off with mods, but I haven't tried that personally.
My biggest pet peeve with the game is that it throws A LOT at you at all times.
You need to scavenge more food, and bullets, and of course some material to build that new room you want in your safe house. But then one of your survivors radios in, telling you he needs help getting back home. And the other room you are building has stopped construction because you need to scavenge some random part from somewhere.
While dealing with any of these issues, you are notified that two new wandering hordes have gathered and are moving towards home.
Dealing with that, a new infected house shows up in your neighborhood that needs clearing out, and one of the special infected are roaming the town as well.
Now one of your survivors is having a tough time so you need to go talk to them (read: take them out to kill some zombies).
During all this, you realize you never took the time to scavenge those supplies you needed at the beginning.
See my point? You are bombarded with content and missions all the time and never get to feel "done", and therefor seldom find a good place to end you game without risking the game screwing you when you get back (due to the real time aspect) if you leave the game in a "bad state" (whatever that is). EDIT: Note that the game never totally screwed me over with this real-time aspect and left the game "unwinnable" but you have no way of knowing what will happen next time you boot it up.
The DLC
Breakdown is just the survival aspect of the main game, but the "story" is replaced with attempting to fix an RV and getting out of the state with your chosen number of buddies (only 5-6 allowed to take with you). Then the next "level" starts where you end up in the same map, with the buddies you chose, attempting to survive again and repairing a new RV to do it all again. For each "level" there are special characters you can unlock by performing certain achievements. Game supposedly gets more difficult for each level as well.
Breakdown is the purest form of
State of Decay, and really enjoyable if you like the game.
The last DLC is some separated story about a conclave of soldiers defending some base. I've actually never tried this one.
So, to sum up:
State of Decay is a pure zombie survival game where you play and manage your group of survivors!
I find it very enjoyable but there are definitely negative aspects in the game as mentioned above.
Plus, it has a good soundtrack by Jesper Kyd!