Summary [7.5 out of 10]

State of Decay (previously know as Class3) is an open world survival horror zombie apocalypse game (OWSHZPG) currently on the Xbox Live arcade and coming to Windows very soon. With minimal backstory you are thrust into a fight for your life; after a relaxing fishing trip and must start out on your journey to not be devoured by the hordes of the dead.

What Is It Like?

Equal parts Dead Rising 1&2, Grand Theft Auto, Left4Dead, Saints Row and Dead Rising. The controls and setup work very much like a Saints Row game, the driving is not quite polished, but the combat and movements work well enough to fend of hungry mouths. Characters can be killed off and you are surrounded by NPCs so you need to be careful on how much you push your usable characters until they reach tired or injured states.

The Great

Level Design: Trumbull Valley is functionally designed and laid out perfectly, while not graphically impressive it functions very well for survival horror. You are able to move from building to building to scavenge items to help support your community. One of the great parts of this is you move along to different parts of the map, the more downtown area of  Marshall is awesome. You can utilize fire escapes, stairs and windows to flee and hide from the undead. The transition from day to night can be slightly jarring and abrupt but overall the environment functions quite well, my survivor community for some rain and other weather though.

Combat: I did not expect this to be as smooth or developed as it was, being able to get out of a tough spot with dodging and combat rolls works great. Really the only thing missing was the ability to toggle between weapons with going into the inventory. This is highly problematic when engaging a large group of zombies and your weapon is about to break.

The Good

Story: Not a whole lot of connectivity or weight here, mostly you bounce around from problem to problem with the occasional cut scene that provides a few more details on the backstory, the Saints Row/GTA model of going from GPS point to GPS serves this game well and provides you with a linear path to follow. Of course you can always take some detours to other locations to investigate and loot. Sidequests include hunting ‘special’ infected which ties up a usable character until you complete this task or wait for it to time out. This was highly annoying and pretty much a waste of resources since it takes a tremendous effort to bring them down and also can result in both usable character becoming tired, injured or eviscerated.

A bit of a spoiler but your starting character can die and you can continue on in the game, you get a lovely achievement watching your character being zombie drawn and quartered. It has an oddly Romeroesque beauty to it (sausages and fake blood).

RPG Element: For the character this is pretty straight forward, fighting makes you better a fighting and cardio makes you better at running and shooting upgrades your proficiency with firearms.

Added bonus is that you can upgrade your home base. Not enough room for sleep, put up a tent outside for people to get some shuteye. Hate scavenging for weapons or food? You can build a workshop to repair tools and vehicles or a garden to grow your own food supply.

The Bad

Special Infected: In this game they are referenced as freaks, really this is a unnecessary tradition carried over from other franchises and poorly executed in this game. I spent more time avoiding these encounters rather them seeking them out. Give me more hordes, larger sized, more intelligence.

Glitches: Undead Labs is already working through some of these issues, whew. I can’t tell you how annoying it was to hear about Too Many Infestations and not being able to even locate or have the time to track them down. I had a survivor die on a porch and I could never retrieve their items, super frustrating as he had two guns, ammo and a cricket bat.  A weird driving glitch, hitting what I assume was a pothole and the truck when flying through the air changing color and then ejecting my character into a zombie horde (granted that was a super tense exciting glitch).

No Multiplayer: This had to be removed but I really feel like the game does suffer a bit without this option, the co-op works great in the Saints Row 2 and 3 games and would be a perfect addition to make this game that much more fun and engaging.

The Randomly Awesome

Numerous call outs to other zombie franchises, I have heard of more but pretty quickly into the game I discovered the Kirkman household.

Conclusion [7.5 out of 10]

For $19.99 or 800 MS points (thankful these are going away soon) this game is a no brainer of a purchase once the next round of patching comes out. Hopefully Undead Labs gets the greenlight to begin work on Class4 the follow up with multiplayer action.