State of Decay

The balance of combat, stealth, scavenging, and environmental interactivity is perfect.

State of Decay is so much more than the sum of its parts: it’s a fun, challenging game of survival that will demand more of you than just twitch reflexes. It’s another feather in the Xbox Live Arcade’s cap, and an essential purchase for gamers looking for a fresh take on a familiar theme.

State of Decay is offering you to have first-hand experience of dealing with the zombie-infested Earth. The intense experience is being built-up by plenty of selves-affecting possibilities resulting in one of the best sandbox games of the recent years.

State Of Decay is an amazing videogame, albeit one hiding beneath one of the ugliest, creakiest engines we’ve seen in some time. It’s a complex, inaccessible beast, but one of the most rewarding and compelling open-world games in years. This is The Walking Dead: The Simulator. And it’s every bit as good as that sounds.

Undeniable technical difficulties aside, with a price tag of only 20 bucks nobody should miss out on State of Decay. It's easily one of the most complex and elaborately designed XBLA title to ever grace that service, so clever and mature I'm struggling to name another open world game that has felt this fresh in the last three years since Red Dead Redemption rode along.

Decay belongs in the pantheon of great modern zombie games alongside Valve’s Left 4 Dead series and Telltale’s Walking Dead episodes.

State of Decay is a fun game that puts you right in the middle of a zombie outbreak and forces you to stop and plan your survival strategy. If you've ever asked yourself what would you do in a zombie apocalypse scenario, this game will offer you a different perspective. And yes, you'll find a few annoying bugs and glitches, but you'll also find a compelling and powerful gaming experience.

This game re-defines the genre of zombie based games with so many ideas and his unique atmosphere, despite tons of tech glitches and a little bit frustrating combat system.

For anyone even remotely interested in what might be like to survive the zombie apocalypse, State of Decay is an absolute must-play.

State of Decay is certainly not without its flaws, but if you can see past them you’ll find that there is a boatload of entertaining gameplay that awaits you in this unique zombie survival simulator.

State of Decay is ugly. It looks ugly, and in many ways it plays ugly. However, there's a simple beauty underneath the frightful veneer, one that surrounds a compelling, interesting, complex, and enslaving little game...Few zombie games, for all their marketing power and visual sheen, can come close to providing what State of Decay does.

By tying so many systems together with tough choices and the constant spectre of death hanging over it, Undead Labs has created something singular. Small complaints notwithstanding, State of Decay is one of the most cohesive, terrifying and engaging open-world games I've ever played.

An entertaining zombie apocalypse sandbox. It's a bit rough visually, but makes up for it with a persistent world. [Aug 2013]

State of Decay is a game that is, in many ways, both the best and worst zombie game you’ve ever played. For all of its bugs, blemishes, and festering imperfections, this game realizes an untapped style of survival gameplay that genre nuts should definitely take notice of.

It's no looker, but this is still a massive and addictive open-world survival romp. [Sept 2013, p.71]

State of Decay offers a huge world full with people that are trying to survive. You can help them or leave them to rot. Your choices have impact in the course of the game and you direct it. Through skill trees and loot you gain more power to defeat the undead and despite the bugs and laggy framerate, State of Decay is a true survival of the fittest.

A good zombie-invasion survival simulator game will please not only the hardcore fans, who forgive the game's questionable technical issues. [Issue#231]

State of Decay may be full of bugs and weird problems, but everything disappears once you start smashing heads and go hunting for supplies and ammo. A game really capable of surprising you when you less expect it, even with its anticlimactic ending.

Despite the extremely ropey visuals and general low production values, State of Decay is a compelling alternative to the linear, plot-driven zombie tales that roam the current gaming landscape.

Undead Labs' first game tries to encompass all possible aspects in zombie survival to achieve the perfect apocalyptic world setting. It doesn't completely succeed in doing so, but it's a great game nonetheless.

State of Decay is an open world zombie survival-rpg, that embraces all of the important aspects to surviving. Collecting, killing, maintaining relationships; the game is given form by its own depth. Many choices you make influence the world around you because of this. State of Decay is very buggy though, but the practiced gamers can see through that.

Undead Labs has created what I truly wanted out of something like The Walking Dead as a video game, and anyone who is a fan of that type of drama should definitely check it out. Be aware of the technical issues going in though, they will be the one thing that can truly hold this title back.

Despite some technical issues State of Decay is a great free to play zombie game, capable to explore lots of different genres with ease.

One of the great experiences on Xbox Live Arcade this year. Some passages scream for co-op, but as a purely single player experience, State of Decay is still strong and unique.

State of Decay is an immersive and suspenseful open-world zombie adventure that shouldn't be missed.

This is a hulking beast, a deep, engaging experience and already one of the year’s standout titles. Xbox Live has offered gamers many gems since its inception and this is one of the more precious.

State of Decay is a game for people looking for a solid gameplay element (Telltale's The Walking Dead is excellent, but it's "just" an interactive story). State of Decay tries to show an emotional plot, but first of all it gives a lot more freedom, combat and exploration. The developers have ignored polishing the details and concentrated on building a convincing survival system (one that is more complicated than "how many bullets have I got?"). I think they nailed it - I had lots of fun and intend to revisit this universe in the future.

State of Decay is unrefined but never anything less than interesting. And in video games, interesting has never been at such a premium.

Regardless, if you like exploration, stress, permadeath, free-roaming games and don’t care about how the arm hair on your man looks, then this is definitely a game for you.

Technically has its weaknesses but the gameplay is pure gold. State of Decay is one of the most memorable, engrossing zombie games to date.

There are some issues on the tech side, but it's a surprisingly good sandbox we think zombie fans will love.

As a sandbox game, State of Decay is not very impressive. But a survival game with an apocalyptic and zombies setting is pretty awesome. Combat, exploration and good community sense make for the most ambitious game for the XBLA in a long time.

Naturally, this mortality will drive some players nuts, while others will relish the undeniably heightened sense of danger.

When you realise there are dozens of addictive hours to enjoy, State of Decay proves itself a tempting purchase for zombie lovers and fans of survival-horror alike.

In the beginning State of Decay is a remarkably ugly and trashy zombie bashing. But the more you dive into the fight for survival with its base and resource management, the open dynamic world gets more and more attractive – despite the AI problems.

It's not the most beautiful and polished game, but the end of the world with all it’s small and big problems rarely felt this real.

The Last of Us meets The Sims, mashed, salted and served with a few lumps. [Oct 2013, p.64]

An open-world survivalist horror with deep strategy elements, State of Decay puts the player's zombie apocalypse scenarios to the test in such a thoughtful, complex way that it's almost possible to ignore the awful central narrative and numerous technical issues. It's a rough game, but one worth exploring.

Outside of its many and varied technical problems, State of Decay is still one of the most accomplished Xbox Live Arcade game to date. [Issue#137, p.121]

It’s a game that could have used some more polish. The experience gets clunky at times, the user interface can be needlessly complex, gameplay can be unbalanced and the general visual appearance can be decidedly uglier. But there is more than meets the eye here; State of Decay does offer value for money, in a way that few modern blockbuster-budgeted games can, for a mere third of the price that you’d usually pay in the end.

Yes, it's plagued by dozens of bugs and glitches, but if you can wait for the patches, in State of Decay you'll find an enjoyable and with a unique character zombie game that will keep you hooked for more than 10 hours.

As long as you can get past the graphical hiccups, this XBLA title will pull you in like a hungry undead cannibal. If you've been looking for a game that will drop you into a deep, zombie-infested world full of all the tough choices and exploding heads you'd expect from the genre, State of Decay most definitely provides.

The game never judges you, offering no morality system despite the frequent dilemmas and difficult choices its systems organically generate. But it certainly tests you. This is as close as we’ve come to putting our lazily daydreamed zombie survival plans into effect.

The technical hurdles are very steep at first, but once I put about five hours in, the sting started to dissipate. These flaws mar the atmosphere that State of Decay tries to create. If you can stomach them, however, the game's sense of urgency and its mountain of tasks and systems will be a nice vacation away from the societal constraints of your everyday, zombie-free life.

If you enjoy exploring post-apocalyptic open worlds, I suggest you at the very least give the demo of State of Decay a shot. There's plenty of depth for those who appreciate the role-playing genre, and the constant threat of death and limited resources will have adrenaline junkies on the edge of their seats. It may not be my cup of tea, but I certainly can see why others would love to take the plunge into this zombie-infested wasteland.

Moving between moments of greatness and moments of glaring ineptitude, State of Decay leaves me with mixed feelings. It has a great idea at its core, and I want to give the developers at Undead Labs credit for that. But lots of games begin with great ideas; executing those ideas well and letting the player experience them fully is the challenge. That’s where State of Decay falls apart.

It's by no means perfect, but Undead Labs has won itself a high level of forgiveness, with an atmospheric world that's as compelling as it is flawed.

It's no Dead Island, but it's on par with other zombie survival games and can provide you with a nice challenge.

For me it’s more of a prototype, a demonstration of a living open world and some clever gameplay mechanics. There is not enough of real game in it and on the other hand too many various bugs, nuisances and repetitiveness. Whether you’ll enjoy State of Decay depends on how much you like sandbox games and looking for fun on your own. [CD-Action 08/2013, p.74]

It's just a shame that it technically can't match up to its really lofty ambitions. [Issue#100, p.86]