I actually had this draft sitting in WordPress for the past two weeks, but two things happened during that period of time. First up was the Kotaku article about the working conditions in Undead Labs, the Microsoft-owned games studio responsible for State of Decay 2, which portrayed the studio in a pretty bad, and not uncommon light. I hope that the expose leads to improvements in the studio, and those affected by the working conditions get some form of closure.

The second thing would be, I just finished State of Decay 2 LAST NIGHT! Funny that the only games that I’ve finished on the Xbox Series S are open world titles Sable and now State of Decay 2. Now, on to the original article:

One of my favourite games for the past several years with both game time on the PS4 and on the PC would be Fallout 4. The 3rd iteration of a first-person Fallout brought about an interesting feature, settlements. Basically you get to set up shop at certain locations within the game world. replete with housing, traders and facilities, as society tries make their through a wasteland.

Now imagine that kind of a game, but instead of radiation and deathclaws, you have zombies instead. And that basically sums up what State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition…. and it’s awesome. I’m wondering how did I actually miss this title when it was released back in 2018, but I’m guessing that it was mainly due to not having a PC (or an Xbox One) at that time.

The Juggernaut Edition came out a couple of years later which not only bundled the previously released DLCs, but also gave the game a graphics overhaul. And it was the Juggernaut Edition that got released on Game Pass. Curious to see what a zombie survival game slightly in the vein of Fallout 4 would feel like, I downloaded the game last week on the Series S, and have been playing it since.

The campaign starts you off in Providence Ridge, an old logging town. Together with your fellow survivors, you get to build up your base, form up alliances with friendly neighbours, scavenging for stuff, gaining control of outposts and utilities, and taking part in missions that get you to tackle zombie infestations and more importantly, take out plague hearts which are responsible for generating plague zombies (which can really make your survivors sick over time, if they get bitten) in a particular area.

You basically get to switch control between the survivors in your base, and I highly recommend that you partner up before heading out sin you can bring another survivor along, and in some missions, an additional one, so three’s a company. Switching is important as each survivor is affected by fatigue the longer you control them, and switching them out gives them an opportunity to rest.

On the flip side, the longer you use certain characters, the faster they get to upgrade their RPG-lite attributes such as shooting, fighting, wits, etc. Characters can gain an additional attribute by reading up books salvaged through the many locations in the game, or by learning skills at facilities such as a power or water supply plant.

The better a survivor performs, the better his or her standing gets within a settlement, turning into a citizen and subsequently a hero. Taking part in missions is an easy way to do this, gaining valuable experience for your character and influence points which is used as some sort of currency in the game.

Like any modern-day organization, you then to get to pick a one out of those bunch of heroes to be the leader of your settlement. Each hero has certain personality traits (e.g. builder, warlord, sheriff, etc) and these traits grant your settlement certain perks once that hero is elected as leader. For example, the builder-leader that I went with let you upgrade your barracks into much cooler luxury digs.

Driving all these settlement building and upgrades are stuff that you need to scavenge which broadly can be categories as food, building materials, parts, medicine, ammo, etc. You also get to find cosmetic upgrades such as clothes and hats for a little bit of dress up. The game’s map handily marks which locations carry what types of scavenging items but you’ll need to survey the area in-game using particular high points like sign-boards to add locations to your map.

Unlike Fallout 4, you do get to drive vehicles and a pro tip, a vehicle is a very good way to attract zombies and mow them down too. You get to upgrade your vehicles by having an auto-shop in your settlement to build vehicle upgrade kits. If you are stuck, the game has a handy rewind feature (which also has a cooldown period), and you get to call down vehicle or weapon drops.

The endgame basically involves some decision making on whether to take in several more survivors in your otherwise already burgeoning settlement. Dismissing or taking them in would just result in the same thing: increased noise/human activity leading to a zombie attack on the settlement itself, with freak zombies like the feral, screamer and the titular juggernaut in the mix.

If you have not checked out State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition, I highly recommend it.