State Of Decay BreakDown

[Knixvelle^ak.]

 

 

 

 

 

INFORMATION:

 

State of Decay: Breakdown raises an important question: does downloadable content still count as content when it takes out more content than it adds? After all, this is still Trumbull Valley as we left it back in June, but here there are no squabbles with military hard-asses or heroic attempts to overcome blocked mountain passages. This, rather, is a bleak scramble for survival, and one in which the zombies are all but guaranteed to win.

 

In short, it's the sandbox so many of us wanted back in the early days of summer. Though bootable as a separate experience from the main narrative, it's meant to address the perception that there was little left to do once the trajectory of the story cut off progression, and thus the potential for replay, aside from milking the last save file. But this addition, priced at almost half the cost of the full game, adds no new enemies or locations; instead, it guts the story completely aside from side missions.

 

GamePlay:

 

Breakdown is an apt title. The core experience involves the usual business of fortifying communities and scrounging for supplies, but it also throws in the need to repair a busted RV and to select five survivors to take along on the most awkward road trip of all time. Alas, it's a road trip to nowhere, because "escape" leads you back to the same town, but the circumstances grow direr upon each visit. You may start in a random location at a higher level than in the previous playthrough and with the buddies you brought along, but cars become more scarce, zombies become stronger and more numerous, and resources don't respawn. It's a Sisyphean vision of hell, and one where success is rewarded with misery. Repeat it long enough, and survival seems less and less likely.

 

The goal, simply, is to survive as long as possible. I'm currently sitting at the seventh difficulty level out of 10, and already I've reached the point where I'm about ready to take up the undead on their pushy invitations to join their numbers. It has taken many hours to reach this point, and in the process, the brutal difficulty has forced a welcome adoption of different tactics that were only toyed with in the core narrative. Firecrackers, mines, and Molotov cocktails become more valuable than standard weapons, for instance, and firing a gun has such horrifying consequences that I tried to avoid firing one altogether. By the fourth difficulty tier, even cars are weak, which means no more joyrides where you mow zombies down like grass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REQUIREMENTS :

 

CPU: Intel Core i5 series or equivalent

CPU Speed: Info

RAM: 2 GB

OS: Windows 7

Video Card: Radeon HD 4750 / GeForce GT 240 / Intel HD 4000

Sound Card: Yes

Free Disk Space: 3 GB

 

TRAILER: