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Thread: State Of Decay 2 (video game)

  1. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neil View Post
    Yeh, I played the original all the way through, so just didn't fancy doing it all again, better graphics or not...
    I thought the same, but I have to say, I'm really enjoying it.
    I'm runnin' this monkey farm now Frankenstein.....

  2. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by shootemindehead View Post
    I thought the same, but I have to say, I'm really enjoying it.
    So worth giving a go in place of SoD2?

    If so I might do so after my current addiction to Valheim has waned.
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan

  3. #18
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    I actually bought State of Decay 2. It was 20 Euro. But I'm going to play out the original with the mods attached. They make a lot harder and get rid of the silly "special" zombies. But I've already lost three characters and I haven't even shifted base yet. LOL. Any mistakes with the zeds is very unforgiving.
    Last edited by shootemindehead; 17-Feb-2021 at 11:21 AM. Reason: .
    I'm runnin' this monkey farm now Frankenstein.....

  4. #19
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    So, I've been playing this for a few days and it ain't bad. There are numerous problems though. My biggest being the sheer lack of mods for it. This means that the worst of State of Decay 1 is transported over to 2 and there's nothing that can be done with it...and it comes in the shape "special" zombies. Probably the worst thing I can think of to do with zombie games. So in this we have stupid things like "screamers" which let out ear piercing yelps that stun your character. Or big, fat, hard to kill "juggernauts" that are frankly just stupid. There's other dumb shit like "plague hearts" that you need to destroy too and all the zombies have silly looking glowing eyes as well...why, I don't know. It's like the makers were afraid of just having a world that was full of Romero zombies, where they're slow, but there's lots of them and a single bite or scratch meant certain death.

    On the other hand the game looks lovely and is a real step up from State of Decay. The world feels very nicely done and there are some cool touches in there, like when I had to climb a ladder to a roof of a building to escape a load of zeds and on the top of the roof were abandoned tents that some other survivors had been using. There were a couple of deck chairs and some empty bottles of booze, giving the impression that a couple of people spent their last few days getting langered and looking at the apocalypse unfold.

    The character models and animations are much nicer than the first game too, but all the characters are generically created and have a very limited number of voices etc. I even had a moment where my character met someone else from a different group and they spoke exactly the same.

    There are very serious problems with the gameplay mechanics though. The most striking being an apparent lack of goal other than staying alive for as long as you can. Whereas 'State of Decay' was about getting your group out of Thrumbull valley, 'State of Decay 2' just seems to involve using up every available resource and then moving to a new map to repeat the whole process. And while this may seem appealing at first, especially to folk who like the whole zed apocalypse thing, it's understandable that some people would get bored quickly with that. Especially when you get your group up to a decent standard of living in a good enclave. Of course, I am still only on the first map and playing on the "standard" level. So harder difficulty levels may do things differently. But, one thing I did notice is that the harder levels just make the zombies (including the "special" ones) more numerous and more taxing to kill. So instead of 20 headshots for a fat bastard, it takes 50 or something dumb like that. However this just makes things annoying, rather than difficult.

    There are missions of sorts in there, that are available from other survivors, but they all feel like a variation of each other. Things like watch my back while I raid a building, or find my friend, or gimmie some stuff. The thing is, you don't actually need to have any contact at all with other groups and they become more of a hindrance than anything else. You can poach a member for your own group, though if you're friendly enough with them. But that will make the group disband for some reason.

    The day/night cycle is weird too. There's about an hour of daylight and an hour of night time. This is far too short to do anything much and you eventually get caught out at night, because you have to go further and further afield to gather resources and the night is VERY dark. So, you just end up just driving home when night falls and arsing about in the camp until morning arrives. I don't know why the devs changed the day/night cycle from the first game, which was balanced fairly well.

    Lastly, there are the vehicles. Jesus christ...the vehicles. Possibly the worst cars I have ever seen in a game. They have zero traction and float about the place like the whole world is a sheet of ice. And playing on a PC and using W for forward, as you would, means that every car acts like you just turned on the ignition and floored it. The wheels spin out, the gears sound manic and keeping control is a task all in itself. Plus, the fuel management is atrocious. A full tank won't get you from one compass point to the next and back meaning each vehicle is a petrol guzzler of epic proportions. I can see what the devs were trying to go for, but it's just absurd. Again it comes down to things being annoying rather than difficult.

    Anyway, it's not bad for the price I got it at and I am enjoying it to a certain degree. But for how long, I don't know. Thing is, with a few tweaks here and there, something like 'State of Decay' could have been the definitive zombie game.
    I'm runnin' this monkey farm now Frankenstein.....

  5. #20
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    There are definitely some issues with the game, bugs, flaws, glitches. Whatever you wanna call em. There's just something about it that hooks me. I'm always discovering new things and new ways to play. The bases in Heartland look amazing. I have yet to get a Red Talon facility at my base also. I haven't played much Daybreak. Just enough to get a few special weapons in the main game. I have several well established communities in the game with alot of resources and many hours of experience.

    I have a couple friends that play but not often enough. If any of you guys want to play some co-op I'm always looking for more people to play. It's cross platform too so PC and Xbox users can play together.
    My name on Steam is 'g.free.guy', aka- that Gordon Freeman guy.

    I play alot of other games too, and always looking for new ones. L4D2, Dying Light, Far Cry New Dawn, Dead Rising 4. Debating on pre-ordering Back 4 Blood.

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    Quote Originally Posted by shootemindehead View Post
    So, I've been playing this for a few days and it ain't bad. There are numerous problems though. My biggest being the sheer lack of mods for it. This means that the worst of State of Decay 1 is transported over to 2 and there's nothing that can be done with it...and it comes in the shape "special" zombies. Probably the worst thing I can think of to do with zombie games. So in this we have stupid things like "screamers" which let out ear piercing yelps that stun your character. Or big, fat, hard to kill "juggernauts" that are frankly just stupid. There's other dumb shit like "plague hearts" that you need to destroy too and all the zombies have silly looking glowing eyes as well...why, I don't know. It's like the makers were afraid of just having a world that was full of Romero zombies, where they're slow, but there's lots of them and a single bite or scratch meant certain death.

    On the other hand the game looks lovely and is a real step up from State of Decay. The world feels very nicely done and there are some cool touches in there, like when I had to climb a ladder to a roof of a building to escape a load of zeds and on the top of the roof were abandoned tents that some other survivors had been using. There were a couple of deck chairs and some empty bottles of booze, giving the impression that a couple of people spent their last few days getting langered and looking at the apocalypse unfold.

    The character models and animations are much nicer than the first game too, but all the characters are generically created and have a very limited number of voices etc. I even had a moment where my character met someone else from a different group and they spoke exactly the same.

    There are very serious problems with the gameplay mechanics though. The most striking being an apparent lack of goal other than staying alive for as long as you can. Whereas 'State of Decay' was about getting your group out of Thrumbull valley, 'State of Decay 2' just seems to involve using up every available resource and then moving to a new map to repeat the whole process. And while this may seem appealing at first, especially to folk who like the whole zed apocalypse thing, it's understandable that some people would get bored quickly with that. Especially when you get your group up to a decent standard of living in a good enclave. Of course, I am still only on the first map and playing on the "standard" level. So harder difficulty levels may do things differently. But, one thing I did notice is that the harder levels just make the zombies (including the "special" ones) more numerous and more taxing to kill. So instead of 20 headshots for a fat bastard, it takes 50 or something dumb like that. However this just makes things annoying, rather than difficult.

    There are missions of sorts in there, that are available from other survivors, but they all feel like a variation of each other. Things like watch my back while I raid a building, or find my friend, or gimmie some stuff. The thing is, you don't actually need to have any contact at all with other groups and they become more of a hindrance than anything else. You can poach a member for your own group, though if you're friendly enough with them. But that will make the group disband for some reason.

    The day/night cycle is weird too. There's about an hour of daylight and an hour of night time. This is far too short to do anything much and you eventually get caught out at night, because you have to go further and further afield to gather resources and the night is VERY dark. So, you just end up just driving home when night falls and arsing about in the camp until morning arrives. I don't know why the devs changed the day/night cycle from the first game, which was balanced fairly well.

    Lastly, there are the vehicles. Jesus christ...the vehicles. Possibly the worst cars I have ever seen in a game. They have zero traction and float about the place like the whole world is a sheet of ice. And playing on a PC and using W for forward, as you would, means that every car acts like you just turned on the ignition and floored it. The wheels spin out, the gears sound manic and keeping control is a task all in itself. Plus, the fuel management is atrocious. A full tank won't get you from one compass point to the next and back meaning each vehicle is a petrol guzzler of epic proportions. I can see what the devs were trying to go for, but it's just absurd. Again it comes down to things being annoying rather than difficult.

    Anyway, it's not bad for the price I got it at and I am enjoying it to a certain degree. But for how long, I don't know. Thing is, with a few tweaks here and there, something like 'State of Decay' could have been the definitive zombie game.
    I hear ya there. There are mechanics though that address some of those problems. As to the night/day cycle, I go out and forage in both day and night. Night is harder, especially navigation in a vehicle on certain maps.
    If you give a survivor the driving skill the vehicles handle better, take less damage and use less gas. Combine that with a vehicle upgrade, like turning the utility truck into the "viking" which has a huge fuel capacity, it makes those problems much more manageable.

    Also, if you ignore the requests/demands of other enclaves they turn hostile. This adds a whole new layer to the game and makes it more fun because you'll end up with multiple hostile enclaves you have to deal with. You get all their shit after you deal with them too.
    For the Juggernauts, all you need to do is put them on one knee and then kill them with a melee attack. Takes around 5 rounds with a 7.62 or 12g, 1 or 2 with the 40mm. If you have a sniper tower at your base call in support for the Juggernaut and stay close so when it drops all it takes is 1 stab in the head. If you claimed the military checkpoint on the map you can use an artillery strike to take out large amounts of zeds, or a juggernaut.
    Use your "Independence pack" radio commands. You get supply drops that have munitions launchers and facility mods to craft them, in addition to free vehicles.
    Play Daybreak mode. It gives you prestige points that you can buy weapons with that you can't get any other way.

    Don't complete the game on a single map. Keep changing maps and clearing them. When your survivors are all skilled up and you have 4 or 5 maps worth of resources the game gets way better. Keep changing leaders too. Use a warlord to build an armory, then elect a builder for the sniper tower, and a sheriff for the field hospital. The Trader is kind of mehh. Good for acquiring skill books and influence points but that's about it. Don't ignore the special skills trader. His books let you overwrite character skills, and that's where the driving skill book is.

  6. #21
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    Well just bought the Juggernaut edition of this on offer... Let's see

    EDIT: Maybe I'm getting old, but after 5hrs of the same game loops, got bored and refunded it.
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan

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