State of Decay 2

State of Decay 2 is the continuation of a remarkable zombie action game with a third-person perspective and survival elements. Together with friends or in proud solitude, you will have to survive in a world teeming with malevolent corpses. You will have the opportunity to organize your own base, which needs to be improved and fortified. But to gather supplies, you may sometimes have to leave your protected habitat and fight your way through.

State of Decay 2 is an action game from Undead Labs with a third-person perspective, set in a zombie apocalypse, with survival elements, released on May 18, 2018, for PC running Windows 10 and Xbox One. It is not a direct sequel to the 2013 game, but it continues the story of State of Decay.

The change of the engine to Unreal Engine 4 has significantly improved the primitive graphics of the original. High-resolution textures, quality effects, well-detailed buildings and objects in the game world have appeared, and its qualitative and quantitative content has increased.

The events of State of Decay 2 take place in an alternative version of our reality, in the USA, a year after the zombie apocalypse caused by an unknown virus. The available resources and adequate people have become fewer, and zombies are more numerous. The player has an entire state at their disposal, divided into three vast maps, each with an open world and its own theme.

Zombies have changed significantly under the influence of the "blood plague," becoming more dangerous and faster, with different bosses appearing. The plague is emitted by "plague hearts" — clusters of virus-infected biomass, which is the main threat in the game world. They will have to be destroyed in a team of bots or friends.

A feature of State of Decay 2 is the absence of a main character as such. There is no full-fledged story, just a short narrative quest in the form of a tutorial that tells the relationship between the first pair of characters. After that, the player is introduced to the second pair, and now they can switch between them to perform various actions.

One character is like one life; if they die, they are dead forever, and you start playing as another. Each person is valuable due to a skill system that develops over time. One is a medic by profession, another enjoys working in the garden, and the third is good with computers. The more practice, the faster one of the four specializations will open up, which can then be further improved.

When the player finds themselves alone in the open world, they are given complete freedom of action: they can play in offline mode with bots or go online multiplayer.

In both modes, the gameplay is essentially the same. The player reaches the base and leads the local group of survivors. The residents have desires that need to be fulfilled; otherwise, everyone will scatter. There are five basic needs: food, building materials, medicine, fuel, and ammunition, so you need to keep them in stock, as well as assign someone to defend the settlement.

The base can be developed by building watchtowers, a infirmary for treating the wounded and those infected with the "blood plague," a kitchen for preparing quality food, a workshop, a gym, a garden, and a library. At first, everything will be done manually, but later you can command the residents to search for useful items for the base or produce them.

Periodically, other survivors (including real players) will appear; they may ask to join your group or want to trade. Other settlements will also develop in the world, some friendly and some not so much.

The cooperative is designed for a group of up to four people, allowing you to play with friends or random people, and all processes (construction, resource gathering, development) are significantly accelerated. There is an opportunity to raid "plague hearts," which is a challenging task with good rewards.