Forum Overview :: Reviews :: I love this game but should hate it

[quote name="Roop"]Fabio mentioned the decaying weapons and system shock 2 spawning. He didn't mention your characters can die while you aren't playing. And I had no idea Tom Chick liked this. If I had known that, I wouldn't have bought it for those three dollars, because if he hates something, I usually like it, as well as the inverse. He must like it for reasons other than why I like it. I bet he secretly hates it. The spawning is a mechanic which you can influence. So now I suddenly like this. And those degrading melee weapons, that's their one stat, it is the one thing to judge a melee weapon by. A 2x4 hits the same as a police baton, but the police baton lasts. System Shock was ridiculous in the way a shotgun would break after you used it a dozen or so times, but I bet many players never even realize the range weapons can actually degrade in this game. So a shotgun here will finally jam after hundreds of uses rather than dozens. It's just a reason to make sure you have a guy who can fix crap in your group. The degrading weapons never feel unfair to me. I quickly learned after a mission, return to base and put my weapon in the refrigerator and grab another. Then overnight everything is repaired. When the icon comes up showing the weapon is close to breaking, it's because I was a dumbass. Characters can die when you don't play. Resources get used up, too. If I had known that, I probably wouldn't have spent three dollars. But it works. I like it. Starting up the game, I'd be filled with dread. It is a horror game, afterall. It took me a while to figure out that the game is actually fair about the whole thing. My problem was I would get a mission to go hunt some trivial armored zombie and ignore it and quit. The problem was when the person giving that mission was another member of my group, and there wouldn't seem to be any consequence to ignoring it while I played. Leaving them needing to kill a zombie when I quit could lead to their death sometimes. The game is obvious about it by highlighting the mission on your screen when you're at your home base. I was being a moron. If you're a gamer-dad with a hungry mewling infant and you can only play games for fifteen minutes, State of Decay isn't for you. This game demands you leave everything in good order when you decide to stop playing. Once I figured this out, nothing bad happens anymore, and there's less dread. Steam says I've played this 200 hours, and that's nuts considering I play it more than games I've paid 60 dollars for. I really enjoy looting junk, I guess. That's what the game is, driving some sports car through zombie filled streets like Charlton Heston in the Omega Man, looting homes and businesses. Fighting zombies. Constructing bombs and blowing them up. There's grim satisfaction when I take on impossible odds and survive. And there's this rarer skill some survivors get where they can do kung fu on zombies, kick the shit out of them. I love kicking zombie in the head and knocking them into a wall and watching their head splashing decayed goo. The way to do it is to buy the base game, which is GTA only zombies. Open world with story missions you do to progress. If you finish and wish you could keep playing, that's when you know to get Breakdown, the DLC. This is the same game only no story missions. You build up your group, prepare an RV to "move on," and build bombs and such. Then pick your best survivors and start all over, only it gets more difficult. I find it all very addictive.[/quote]