State of Decay 2 Preview

State of Decay 2 is definitely an improvement and step forward for the series as it builds upon the foundation of the original. They've went further this time around offering a few large areas and dynamic missions that keep things constantly fresh. I do however typically enjoy traditional narrative based adventures and that isn't fully present here. There are some minor personal missions that come up, but there wasn't much development with them. That being said, if you just want an endless sort of survival situation then the game can play out like that. Still, I also would have liked a regular endless option too.

It's mostly focused on destroying these Plague Hearts that are situated across the world. These act as more dangerous forms of Infestations which also return from the first game. These are about as dangerous as zombies get with the wandering hordes being lightly threatening. At times I did wish the density of zombies was higher, I never felt threatened while playing this one whereas the first game brought a better sense of fear. The wealth of management is incredible and I loved the scale of things. It's a vast world and it looks great on Xbox One X with 4K resolution and HDR support.


It's even better to do all this while in large groups, you can have up to four players. It's easy to do as well as you shoot a flare looking for others or just matchmake. It would have been better to have this option right from the menu however as loading into a game is required prior to matchmaking. There are options for how you choose to play as well with private, friends only and offline solo. The core of the game is based around the collection of supplies. You can venture around gathering or deal with the plethora of random quests that come up. For a game about zombies and the apocalypse, there sure are a pile of survivors left inside a focused area.

That aside, you go around helping people and gaining alliances. You can build your shelter so there are more options to play and potentially better ways to help with upgrading. There's a lot of quality depth with the base aspects. Each character is unique, so one might help with gardening and another is geared towards the workshop. It's a basic note on that since there's more complexity, but it works well and you want to find a varied squad for it. This is a light State of Decay 2 preview, I wanted to touch on key points prior to fully giving any final thoughts as this part of the embargo was up. The full review will follow, but for now I hope this covers some key elements of what to expect going in.

Read our Shadow of the Tomb Raider Preview
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State of Decay 2 Xbox One X Enhanced Screenshot
Gamerheadquarters Reviewer Jason Stettner