So you repeatedly throw your people into danger on these desperate trips into small Texan city-fragments, filled with zombies and looters, in the name of finding the 40 'parts' which will let you build the infirmary. All those doors and walls and car shells and windows and wooden pallets and metal barrels and light fittings and furniture littering the streets and structures you visit? Not 'parts'. For instance, to build a science lab or an infirmary requires a fixed number of 'parts', which almost always entails multiple trips into the field, from which only a handful of objects specifically labelled 'parts' can be used as parts. ![]() In any case, the issue for me is more that the grind here is too mechanical rather than that it's there at all. Can Dead State really make similar claims about its fantastical theme? But that is a message game, using the grim repetition of its away missions and parts-collection to sell us on the idea that civilian life in wartime is hell. The former relates to grind, and in fairness it is only thematically appropriate that survivors of an infection-shattered world would have to scrape out a subsistence life, foraging constantly for food and other resources, but is this 'fun'? We're in similar territory to This War Of Mine, which is also primarily a scavenger hunt with the purpose of building up and maintaining a safe-ish shelter. Dead State is an extremely well-observed apocalypse survival RPG, but unfortunately it's also irritating, both on a structural level and in how its combat works. There's a lot going on, and the game is impressively unmerciful too, as befits its scenario. Because almost anyone can be infected, perma-killed or in some cases sent away, the shape of your group is never certain, so though the essential structure is the same from game to game, the vignettes within it will differ. The plot is basically 'survive', but small story beats offering crises and new characters pop up as time wears on, some of which are scripted and some of which are reactive to the status of your fellow survivors. ![]() There are loose goals, but primarily it's about about discovering (and surviving) locations around you through an ever-widening circle of exploration across a big Texan map (comparable in size and locales to early Fallouts, though don't expect quests or chats at any of your stop-offs) which becomes more manageable if and when you find faster modes of transport. In between this stuff, you try to manage the physical and mental well-being of your growing (and sometimes diminishing, if you're inept or unlucky in fights) band of survivors. So you send your character and up to three allies into the field, where they move in real-time until they get into a fight, at which point the game shifts into X-COM- or Fallout-style turn-based battles. You have a base, which is a school in various states of disrepair, and whose rooms can only be built or fixed with resources obtained from the world outside, which is packed with zombies and murderous survivors. There's something you should know.' I'll describe Dead State quickly first, though. What I'm looking at is whether Dead State: Reanimated is a game fellow first-timers should play or not.īroadly, the answer to that is 'yes.' But I'd stay your hand before you opened your purse, look you in the eyes with infinite solemnity and say 'wait. I know there are a raft of new difficulty options to keep the hardcore or the over-familiar engaged, but frankly the last thing I'd want to do right now is make Dead State any more punishing. ![]() I should point out that this is my first experience of Dead State, so I'm about as much use as a band-aid on headshot when it comes to identifying whether the new and changed features are improvements or not. The free 'Reanimated' update is a fancy name for a mega-patch designed to address assorted gripes about the doomy turn-based strategy/RPG zombie survival game, and also my opportunity to finally visit the blighted town of Splendid, Texas. I'd been wanting to check out Doublebear's Dead State - which I'm going to loosely label 'The Walking Dead does X-COM' - for a while, but Wot I Thinkery fell to someone else upon its initial release.
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