State of Decay

[Binnatics]

And that's probably what makes it so popular; a perfect format for the 13-in-a-dozen to pass time imagining being someone else not having to think of their own miserableness  :-D

I never watched that show, I don't think I've missed something.  8)

[fragger]

Me either. I'm not a fan of zombie stuff.

[Art Blade]

same :-D

[Dweller_Benthos]

Back to the game, if anything, there's too much to do in it. Side missions keep popping up, and if I'm in the middle of something, can't run halfway across the map to help out so-and-so, and the mission goes away. Sometimes it's a person in trouble, and sometimes they live, sometimes not. There are also personnel management aspects that don't appeal to me too much, like getting a notice that someone is scared or sad and you have to take them for a walk-and-talk to straighten them out. While killing zombies of course.

A few times, I've brought a friend on a mission, knowing it might be hairy, only to find it's one of those missions you have to do alone and as soon as you get out of the car, your friend goes awol. Weird things like that bug me, but so far it's at least enjoyable, and I don't regret the $33 I spent on it, but also glad I didn't pay full price.

[Art Blade]

I like your both informative and satirical style, D_B  :-D Makes me chuckle all the while  :-D

Actually, +1  :-X for that  ^-^

[Dweller_Benthos]

Thanks Art. I did a bunch of those walk-and-talk missions last night as they had been piling up. Two of them were with the a-hole from the first mission I posted about. First was was to tell him to chill out and stop being an a-hole and the second was because he was scared. But all of these follow the same format, walk out into the surrounding area a ways, kill some zombies and talk about our feelings, then go home.

I did have a few fun times though, there are places that get infested, having a bunch of zombies in one area, usually a building, with a couple of "screamers", special zombies that scream (go figure) to call in more zombies. These places were always a pain to clear out, as there were usually a lot of zombies to fight and the screamers paralyze you when they scream, so bringing a buddy helps, but I found that tossing in a few molotov cocktails first really thins the herd and is quite satisfying to boot. A couple times, the screamers got taken out by the fire and all we had to do was mop up the stragglers.

I did lose another friend though, rescuing someone else, a herd of zombies found us just as we were leaving and got the better of me. Three people I've lost now, all my better fighters, so time to level up the others. I did find an M1 Garand though, and that has some nice long range zombie stopping power. Noisy as heck though.

As for the buddies you bring along, they are pretty capable, and usually help more than hinder, so that is something to be said for the AI.

[Art Blade]

cool. AI buddies that actually help.. most of the time I want to stop fighting enemies just for a few moments so I can beat the life out of those AI muppets that make noise but don't help, I'm fighting enemies on my own, anyways. So that is cool that you got help. I hope you don't run out of buddies which would mean a premature end, if I understood the game principle correctly. So.. don't let 'em get you  :-()

[Dweller_Benthos]

Made a quick video of some game play, a couple of runs at some infested places. Trying a different approach from having a buddy back me up and go in swinging, used firebombs in the first segment that made short w@&k of the place, doing the "cool guys don't look at explosions" technique completely by accident, lol. Second one, I called in an airstrike from the army guys and didn't even need to get close.

Watch in 1080 if you can, to get all the nuances, and to make the w@&k I put into it worth it, lol. Took forever to render. Was going to do it in 60 fps as that's all the rage now on youtube, but was getting tired of waiting.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iWtXp28F-Y#ws

[Art Blade]

fun vid  :-X :) I like that casually tossing a molotov over the shoulder and torch all those zombies behind you at once that came pouring out the smashed window. 

[JRD]

Nice video indeed. The game looks nice.  :-X  8)

[Dweller_Benthos]

lol, that was a complete mess up on my part, I was going to run in a panic, but hit the throw item button mostly by accident. I thought I was dead in my own fire, but somehow got out unscathed.

[Art Blade]

excellent accidental tactics and choice of weapons and getting away with it unscathed is remarkable :-() I think you're SWAT incarnate in that game, "special weapons and tactics" indeed 

[PZ]

lol, that was a complete mess up on my part, I was going to run in a panic, but hit the throw item button mostly by accident. I thought I was dead in my own fire, but somehow got out unscathed.

:-X  looks like you were a Molotov expert in the video!

Can the zombies get to you while you're in the car?

[Dweller_Benthos]

I've never let the zombies attack the car long enough to find out, they can rip the doors off, so I'm guessing once they do that, they can drag you out of the car and have their way with you, which would be unpleasant. Or climb inside with you, but I kinda think they'd either just attack you from the open door or get you out. If you have a buddy riding in the back of a pickup truck, they will try to climb over the side to get to them, and the buddy will try to knock them back off, but again, I never let it go far enough to see what would happen.

[Art Blade]

give the car keys to your buddy, tell him to go for a spin, and just watch him while he finds out. >:D

[PZ]

I think it funny that you can run them over so easy  :-X

[Binnatics]

Cool vid D_B!

Nice to see some in-game footage. It reminds me quite a bit of DayZ. The desolate village with abandoned houses full of old furniture. It seems to be a standard zombie game ingredient. The only two zombie games I've played (aside from the CoD zombie mansion) were from a different kind... Resident Evil 5  and Dead Rising 2. The RE5 is more like an adventure game, that happens to be full of zombies, DR2 is just crazy slaughter in a shopping mall. This type of zombie game is more driven by the idea that you enter a desolate land where you're absolutely alone, with filthy danger around every corner.
I think I could like the game, it certainly doesn't have the major downsides DayZ has to deal with ;)

[Art Blade]

It just occurred to me that I played indeed one more zombie game apart from DayZ: FallOut3 which happened to have zombies or ghouls in it.

[Binnatics]

Oh, indeed, I played thatone as well. But I wouldn't really call that a zombie game. More an apocalyptic open world game

[Dweller_Benthos]

Well, lost two more guys last night, running a stupid walk-and-talk mission that are usually easy. This one started that way, but I failed to notice a zombie horde nearby. Usually, you just get to the location, wipe out the 8-10 zombies there, and leave. Not usually a big deal. This time a zombie horde walked past while we were fighting and joined in. That made it tough. Lost the buddy first, then my main guy couldn't keep up and got eaten. Now I'm down to four friends, three of them women. Now, the women are fine to use as main players, but one of them is low skilled because I just made friends with her and haven't leveled her up yet.

Then, I started having a crash issue where the game would crash on exit. Looking on the forums, this is something they know about and are "working on" thing is, that post was from August, so it's been worked on for a few months now. One of the suggestions was to start another game, and just run that long enough to close the game from it, which keeps it from crashing. Seems there's a problem with the save process or something. So I started a new game for that and am seriously thinking of just continuing that game, now that I know my way around a bit, and how things w@&k, I might enjoy that a bit more and try to keep more people alive. Even if it means re-doing a few hours of game.

[PZ]

Seems to be the norm these days - game crashing bugs, patches, then the old game saves don't w@&k any longer.

If you lose your friends, can you make new ones so you always have a full complement?

[Dweller_Benthos]

This crash bug only happens on exit, and doesn't do anything to the save game, just annoying.

You can make more friends, generally by doing missions with/for them, but after a while, I don't think there's any more people to make friends with, not sure, haven't gotten that far yet. But if one character dies and has no friends to take over, that's it, there's no way to continue the game.

[PZ]

... But if one character dies and has no friends to take over, that's it, there's no way to continue the game.

???  That would keep me from playing the game - I'm not too good at protecting my friends

[Binnatics]

... I just made friends with her and haven't leveled her up yet.

:-D 8-X

[Art Blade]

 ???