State of Decay

[Shannow]

If anything, this would be the "Grapes of Wrath" of gaming.  

Betcha could get a cpl of hundred grand on kickstarter.

[CmdrSlack]

I've now moved my crew to a new, larger space. Oddly enough, it only has one additional facility. It also has an unfortunately non-upgradeable guard tower.

Nearby is a huge facility, but I need 1 more person in my group to take it over. So now, I'm blowing 100 influence as often as I can to use the radio to troll for new residents. I am really wishing I hadn't lost those two survivors the other day. It's almost enough to make me restart, but it kind of defeats the design of the game to do that.

Something that I learned recently -- do not underestimate the power of outposts. They work best near your home -- they keep the zombies down in the surrounding areas. You can abandon one and establish another, so having them near your home is always possible, even if you move. Definitely use outposts.

[Ingmar]

This game, and all that Citizen Kane talk, has inspired me to design a game around Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. I am not even kidding. I wish I knew people with skills to at least try working on this. Strongly story driven while still being a huge sandbox about surviving The Great Depression as a family of farmers relocating from Oklahoma to California after the tractor and the banks evicted you from your land, with lots of choices to make especially moral ones which would greatly affect the plot and your relationship with the galaxy of characters you would encounter (including the Joad family of course). With a bit of Singleton's Midwinter into it. Lots of room for combat if you choose the Outlaw way, or negotiation, resource management and stealth if you choose the Paragon way (as if things could actually be that easy. Point of the game would be to force you to make choices you wouldn't want to make). I would call it Okies.

If anything, this would be the "Grapes of Wrath" of gaming.  

http://nygamecritics.com/2011/02/04/john-milius-homefront-is-grapes-of-wrath/

 

[Falconeer]

Good find Ingmar. Didn't play Homefront but considering it's a first person shooter where you are members of a resistance movement fighting against a near-future North Korean military occupation of the United States, I think my many thousand kickdollars worth idea is safe.

[Ingmar]

It gets even better if you know John Milius is the guy that the Coen Brothers based the character of Walter on (Big Lebowski).

[Lantyssa]

Sounds like an update of Oregon Trail.

[Surlyboi]

It's better than Oregon Trail. And that's me acknowledging the game is pretty damn good.

[CmdrSlack]

If it had multiplayer, it would be even better -- I wouldn't mind playing with other f13 folks just so long as you don't have to spawn at Cherno and run all the way to Castle Awesome.

There's that new "The Division" game that they announced for the next gen consoles. It has multiplayer and is all post-apoc, etc. It's also part of the Tom Clancy franchise, so yeah.

EDIT -- Finished this on Sunday. The story got -- choppy at one point. I must have fucked something up. Losing one of the starting characters may have been the culprit. I also (apparently) let some NPCs die who (based on the achievements) must have had more story. Another group of survivors also seems under-developed.

There doesn't seem to be any way to know which events are "never going to expire" events and which are ones that require immediate attention. That's good from a gameplay perspective -- it makes all of the events seem urgent. I kind of wonder whether a specific NPC would die if you let things go long enough.

I'm playing through a second time to see if I can find the parts that I broke. Also, I'd like a playthrough where none of my playable characters die.

[Ceryse]

Aren't almost all the NPC's that join you playable if you befriend them? All I really know about the game is that based from the youtube let's plays I found; I will enjoy the game and the people doing the let's plays fit the stereotype of console gamers being absolute morons.

[Amarr HM]

I'm playing through a second time to see if I can find the parts that I broke. Also, I'd like a playthrough where none of my playable characters die.

On my third play through, I cut the other two short due to losing Marcus, about to complete it and I haven't lost anyone outside the main story.

Two things I've done that seem to have helped. Not bothered to request scavenger pickups just get everything yourself, most of my searching when I'm in a group doing a mission and always respond to ally in trouble as soon as you see one.

To get a small head-start before you arrive at the church and the game starts flinging missions at you. Load up your backpack with the best gear you can find and search as many locations near the church as you can before tiredness kicks in.

[Shannow]

PC version out before the end of the year and supposedly through steam early access.

[Ceryse]

Meh. By the time it eventually comes out I'll be too busy with other games. Probably grab it some time next year when it gets discounted heavily on a Steam sale. Likely would have been a day one purchase had the PC version hit before the large slate of games coming out in September and after. Wasted opportunity, in my view. For awhile the game had a decent amount of hype that's already largely vanished (at least to me and those I know). Too long of a delay and too little communication.

[Mrbloodworth]

PC version out before the end of the year and supposedly through steam early access.

Source?

[Shannow]

Meh. By the time it eventually comes out I'll be too busy with other games. Probably grab it some time next year when it gets discounted heavily on a Steam sale. Likely would have been a day one purchase had the PC version hit before the large slate of games coming out in September and after. Wasted opportunity, in my view. For awhile the game had a decent amount of hype that's already largely vanished (at least to me and those I know). Too long of a delay and too little communication.

Not to be snarky but how does any of that invalidate this as a game? It would just seem to display your own slavery to marketing and temporary news cycles?

[schpain]

we heard anything about multiplayer plans?

[Surlyboi]

"In the works"

[Shannow]

PC version out before the end of the year and supposedly through steam early access.

Source?

here

[Paelos]

 

[Ceryse]

Not to be snarky but how does any of that invalidate this as a game? It would just seem to display your own slavery to marketing and temporary news cycles?

I didn't mean to say that it somehow invalidated it as a game, merely that I believe the devs missed a fairly big opportunity. The game garnered a fair amount of hype for PC gamers and I, personally, think a part of that was a relatively quiet span of releases; there hadn't been anything new and interesting to occupy our time. By missing that window with a fairly good fall and winter coming up (at least by my standards) of high end games to buy and play.. it will force State of Decay to the side or later on, in my opinion.

I'll still purchase the game as it does look quite interesting.. it just doesn't have enough to warrant buying it on release after my money and time is going to go elsewhere to larger, more anticipated titles.

Basically; still a purchase, just think the developers missed a big window of opportunity in the schedule of PC games to cash in and wasn't impressed with their communication on the port while the hype was high. Latter part may be fairly irrelevant in the long run, but for me.. well, I just find it annoying.

[Paelos]

I agree, releasing them closer together would have made more sense. Now they go into the holiday meatgrinder of competition.

[schpain]

early access is up on steam.

[schild]

It's truly "early" access though, rather than what some of these games are, which is basically done.

[Mrbloodworth]

Looks like they killed Co-op.

[schpain]

were the graphics this bad in the xbox release?  i picked up an xbox remote last year on sale so that bit doesn't bother me, and so far it looks interesting.  i'm pinning a fair bit of hope on coop/multiplayer at some stage, not sure if that was dumb.

*cough I'm looking at you, project zomboid*

[Shannow]

Anyone played the DLC? (Breakdown)

Worth the 7 bucks?  (Original is on sale on steam atm)

[Paelos]

I bought it. Don't know yet, but at $7 it's worth the flier.

[Ceryse]

Anyone played the DLC? (Breakdown)

Worth the 7 bucks?  (Original is on sale on steam atm)

I have it, and have been playing it. I enjoy it, personally. If you enjoyed the base game but simply wanted the game experience without the story missions getting in the way and the ability to have a never ending game (unless all your characters die) that can get progressively more difficult.. you should enjoy it. The flaws of the base game are still present and there's currently a couple annoying bugs that will hopefully get fixed soon (i.e. one of the missions will bug out the Mood of the person you save, but I haven't really noticed any serious side effects from it.. that could just be me not being observant).

I'm only up to Difficulty Level 4 so far, but things are starting to get harder and I can already see the difference in the number of vehicles and the zombies. I am actually starting to have to sneak around now and then unlike the base game and earlier difficulties where it was just easier to run around and kill anything that got in your way.

[Cyrrex]

Wow, really fun game, this one.  I wish the graphics were a tad better...not because everything has to have wonderful graphics, but more so because I keep getting jumped by zombies I didn't see hiding in the bland backgrounds.  Driving controls are also a bit annoying.  Permadeath of your main characters is a hard pill to swallow, but the game is better for it.  I restarted my first game after several hours because I lost all three of my main starting characters - I was still kinda learning the controls and stuff, so it didn't seem fair.  After my restart I soon lost Marcus again due to inescapable zombie attack.  In this case, it was for more natural reasons that fit into the story (rather than due to poor control from me), so I let it go.  I think the danger of losing any character that you have leveled up even a little is part of what makes the game so good.  I took Sam up to the lake to search for something, and it was a non-stop hellish struggle for survival.  Low on ammo, flimsy melee weapon that broke, no meds.  Ended up having to run all the way back down to the bridge, chased the whole way, and just barely managed to cross over, climb up (and yes, the fuckers climbed up after me, much to my shock) get in my truck and tear ass outta there.  Brilliant.

Way better than the sum of its parts.  There are roughly 40 billion zombie apocalypse games on the horizon, and I bet few of them will be as fun to play as this one is.

[CmdrSlack]

Rise!

So there is a new expansion for this game. It has a whole new setting and includes squad mechanics. I am barely into it so far, and it is a bit hard getting used to the new bits. Since you have a squad, there's way more zombies. When they swarm an escort target.....forget it. Hopefully I will suck less as I play more.

Oh yeah, I paid $6.99 on Steam. Not sure about console.

[Cyrrex]

Okay, but is it still fun?  Does it still have the general structure of the original?  I accidentally wiped out a Steam save about 15 to 20 hours into the main campaign, wouldn't mind having a reason to go back to the game.

[CmdrSlack]

I played for maybe two hours last night. It is fun. I have work to do this weekend, and I plan to play this during breaks from writing. Once I get deeper into the expansion, I will be more useful  review-wise. It has been worth the seven bucks so far.

[Surlyboi]

It's a lot less forgiving than original game. The daily sieges are brutal and I lose about a survivor or a refugee a day.

[Paelos]

Is it a lot of escort stuff, or squad stuff? How are the controls compared to the original game where it was just your one POV at a time wandering about?

[Surlyboi]

A decent amount of escort stuff with the ability to do it in squads. The squad AI is a little shitty at times, causing my squad mates to stand there and do nothing while I'm getting gangbanged by zekes or going only melee while they've got fully functional guns at their disposal.

The storyline has been pretty good so far though, even if I want to punch a certain radio personality in the throat.

[Sky]

Escorting missions have been my least favorite thing about games going back to Syndicate.

There was one in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault where you were escorting a guy through a house and there were ze germans out in the front yard, so I kept trying to snipe at them from the doorway and the damned friendly AI kept shooting me in the back, so I move out of the way and he's all YOOOOLLOOOOOO dead, game over.

Fuck escorting shitty AI. We will never see good AI in games. I don't even think developers care anymore.