When making a sequel, most studios make it a priority to build on the strengths of the original while patching up weaknesses. State of Decay 2 gets the first part right. Five years after the first game clawed its way to cult-favorite status, Undead Labs has released a follow-up that offers...

Buy State of Decay 2 In 2013, State of Decay introduced players to a different kind of zombie apocalypse. It eschewed big action set pieces for the thrill of mere survival. Taking down massive zombie hordes with powerful and inventive weaponry was cast aside in favor of practicality.

State of it!

Unpredictable and tense; Decisions have real consequences

Riddled with glitches and bugs; Core gameplay loop feels repetitive with little reward; Joining a co-operative game has frame-rate issues

Bethany is dying. She'd been bitten by a blood plague zombie on a supply run gone wrong. She didn't have much time left at this point and a decision needed to made. She was past the point of being cured, leaving only two choices.

There are lots to like in State of Decay 2 and if managing people and finite resources against an environment that wants to eat you alive is your thing, you'll likely have a blast. And with its online co-op that allows you and three other people or friends to play together, it could even be more fun...

State of Decay 2 's open-world battle for survival against a zombie menace is the right kind of post-apocalyptic fun. It creates plenty of high-stakes moments, punctuated by the relative calm of foraging for supplies while always looking over your shoulder.

When I was playing the original State of Decay, there was one resounding feeling I had about it. I enjoyed it, of course, but I felt like it could have been so much better had it had co-op. Just the concept, the premise, was so well suited to this type of game. Enter State of Decay 2.

A grotesque and bloated corpse – dead, yet still alive – shambles towards you, groaning gutturally. The dead have come back to life, and … Wait, you've heard this one before You're right, the whole zombie thing is getting a little played out.

Promising core systems; Smashing zeds with car doors

Unbelievably janky; Tedious gameplay; Generic setup

State of Decay 2 follows a similar pattern of the first game. If you can put up with a game that isn't quite state of the industry when it comes to visual fidelity and performance, there's a fun zombie survival game underneath it all.

State of Decay 2 is a flawed game, and it seems to suffer from Microsoft's increased demand for exclusive titles. If it had about six more months or so of development time, it's likely that the tone of this review would be very different.

Combat and movement is a bit more fluid than the original; Multiplayer co-op available; Three maps at launch as opposed to the original's one

Some systems from the original seem simplified for the worse; Repetitive gameplay; Plot is sparse and uninteresting; Tags