I've seen a few videos on this one, looks like it's right up some of you guy's alley. I might even think about it, but it's got that third person stigma going for it, so I'm doubting I'd get it. Plus what little game time I do have is spent mostly in Minecraft and a few others, starting a new one probably wouldn't get much attention.
But, it looks open world, in that you're a survivor of the zombie apocalypse, and you have to band together with other survivors, gather resources, fortify a safe zone, and of course, kill zombies. There are missions you can take on, and how you get there and what you do once you're there is up to you. Aside from that, there doesn't appear to be any sci-fi elements to the game, no weird weapons, and usually it looks like you're better off with a baseball bat than a gun, because noise attracts more zombies lol.
It's on Steam http://store.steampowered.com/app/241540/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/241540/) for $20 it might be worth it just to run around a bit and kill some zombies, even if I don't play it that much lol.
there's apparently some type of ongoing fascination for zombie games as they keep popping up like mushrooms after a rainfall.
The environment looks kind of interesting. When they say to look for survivors, it sounds like this is an online game - is that so?
not sure but I read some and "online" wasn't mentioned anywhere
I don't think there's any online aspect, from reading more about it, it seems there are several NPC characters that you have to interact with, and once you become friends with them, you can switch your player to that character, to give your original character time to rest and recuperate. Your friends are also your extra lives, if you die and have no friends, the game is over. If you have friends, you can continue the game using that character, but the one who died is gone. You can go pick up his supplies, but any experience and skills he had are also gone.
It's a port from xbox I think, so the usual caveats that go with that. There is mouse and keyboard controls, so that's good, and they are customizable, so even better. The game and two DLC are a little over $30, I might just go for it, and see how it plays. It will take a while to get used to 3rd person, and may eventually make me drop the game, but I'm looking for something new and with so many zombie games out, might as well try one of them. Well, Minecraft had zombies four years ago.......
Hope you decide to get it, D_B - would be interested in reading your thoughts
Sounds like a more reasonable game now that online is off the table
D_B, wow. :)
Oh and D_B.. once you're through that door, just give all the other TPS games such as JustCause2 a shot. Just for comparison and so forth. Ahem. Not saying anything.. but.. you know.. you're about to enter a whole new gaming universe loaded with opportunities. :) :-X
Me again, D_B :) I was just then laughing when I read Stiku's post (http://www.openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=3314.msg70280#msg70280) because in my previous post here I was debating whether or not to mention the Grand Theft Auto series which has been TPS. Stiku just came up with news that GTAV will have a FPS aspect which can be toggled.. so maybe GTAV is just what you need: I love games that allow you to switch back and forth between 1st and 3rd person view. It would help you a lot and it's a comparatively new game (well, console release some 1.5 years ago but PC release supposedly end of January 2015).
Try that one :)
Well, I tried one of the Assassin Creed games that I got for free a while back, and just can't seem to get into them. I have played 3rd person games before, and never really got the hang of it. Maybe it's the console stigma, I don't know.
But ones that you can switch between I'm fine with, one of the Star Wars games had that and 99% of the time I used first person, except when dueling light sabers and used third person for that since it's easier to see your moves that way. Maybe the same with State of Decay, if there was an option to switch, I'd have no problem with it.
wasn't ArmAII half-half, too? Hitman:Bloodmoney had a toggle but some cameras weren't adjusted properly, like wielding those Silverballer pistols with scopes attached I think had that glitch that prevented you from using the scope in 1st person view. lol
Quote from: Art Blade on November 06, 2014, 09:23:48 AM
wasn't ArmAII half-half, too? ...
Not sure, but if not, I'll bet someone made a mod to do it
Well, I went for it and bought it. First impressions, not too bad, but I really would be enjoying it more if it were 1st person. Immediately downloaded some mods to adjust the visuals, as the shaded areas are ink black during the day time. So I grabbed a couple mods that make the shadows and building interiors more realistic. Mouse controls are pretty good, but I still get hung up on things like walking through doors while fighting zombies. Basically just stand there and hack n slash and hope for the best until I get unstuck.
Looked into another mod that makes vehicles not be made of tissue paper. As it is now, you run over three or four zombies with a large pickup truck(!) and it is all dented in and the engine starts to smoke. One run around the small town I started in is enough to ruin a vehicle completely. So I'll probably install that mod too. Most of the other mods I see are cosmetic or over the top powerful and I want to play the game as close to vanilla as possible first.
But it is pretty fun, you are given missions to do that advance the story line and side missions that you can do if you want when you want. Most of those have a time limit, if you don't do them they go away. But there seem to be enough that there's always something to be doing aside from the main story.
I just would be enjoying it more if it were 1st person. I think the problem is, watching a character walk around takes away from the immersion more than 1st person.
Sounds like at least you can have some fun in the game :-X
Yeah it has been fun, and I think with the vehicle damage mod it will be more fun.
One thing irked me though, one of the first missions is to get some medicine for someone who's had a run-in with a zombie. So after scouting where a vet clinic is (Hey, dog antibiotics are the same as people antibiotics, right?) I hear over the radio that two people will meet me there. So I hop in my truck and head that way. Not soon after, one of the people I'm meeting sends over the radio not to drive up like a maniac, the noise attracts zombies. So I park a short distance away and walk up. We gather the stuff at the clinic and head back, weighed down by large backpacks full of medicine. Of course, I stop at my truck and stow the backpack and the guys says "Are you deaf? I said no vehicles!" In case you couldn't tell, this character is the a$$hole of the group. So, I get the backpack back out and we start walking. Not 2 minutes later, the other person's backpack falls apart and she can't carry the stuff anymore, and says to get a car to ride back in.
grrrrrrrr.......
So, we are too far from where I left my truck, it was smoking anyway, so I go to grab a sedan that's parked in front of a minimart, beating off a few zombies on the way. The other guy gets mad about the vehicle use and takes off, leaving us. So I get the car, the other girl hops in and we take off back to the safe(ish) place we are staying.
I mean, it just irks me the way they artificially manipulate how you have to play.
Another bit that's a tad annoying is the defend the building scenarios. Every now and then you have to blockade a building and keep the zombies out for a certain amount of time. Usually this requires you nailing boards over the windows and running back and forth trying to keep them all blocked. You can't fight the number of zombies that arrive, so you play apocalypse carpenter for five minutes until the arbitrary timer is up.
Once I get a vehicle that's durable, I'll drive around the map more and see what there is to see. It looks extensive from what I can tell.
Sounds like the a$$hole is begging to get the crap kicked out of him :-()
Too bad about the building timer thing - I have never liked timed events of any kind where you are locked in to the event. In a more realistic situaiton, you would be able to escape the building somehow rather than being required to stay like some idiot that doesn't know any better.
Quote from: Dweller_Benthos on November 07, 2014, 09:39:09 AMso you play apocalypse carpenter for five minutes
:laugh: :-X
Sounds like they ripped that boarding-up-the-windows thing from a bonus mini-game that was unlocked at the end of Call Of Duty: World At War (it was called Nazi Zombies or something). It was an option that appeared on the main menu once you'd played all the way through the main game. You're in a bombed-out old house and Nazi Zombies are trying to get at you through windows that you have to try to keep boarded up whilst fighting off the zombs. You had guns and stuff to fight with and could earn XPs to trade for new weapons and/or ammo, and the idea was you just kept playing to see how many levels (waves) you could survive until you finally got clobbered. As each new wave of zombies arrived they would move faster and be more numerous. Eventually they'd get you.
Silly fun, for a little while.
Well, Fragger, funny you came up with that zombie game. I played a sequel of that Nazi Zombie game you describe, it came with CoD Black Ops. It is the best zombie game I've ever played. So simple, but so damn tense. Surviving waves and killing zombies would indeed give you some sort of XP, which you could use to either open weapon or ammo crates or open doors. After a while you'd find out you were in a huge old cinema where you could literally run around in. It was 4 player coop, it's probably the best co-op I've ever played, together with FC3 coop and GTA IV coop.
I really am curious, D_B, if you will forget the 3rd person view after a while. That's what happened to me as well, because I know it usually doesn't add up to the game immersion indeed. Somehow, after a while, you just forget about it. I think the best 3rd person gameplay is offered by Max Payne 3. There it WILL add to the experience once you get used to it. Seeing your character move and do certain things will just add to the experience, and will make you feel more "one" with your digital you. It's amazing how it works; I think it's proper manipulating the player's imagination.
my fave TPS is SaintsRow3. It is just cool to dress your character with truckloads of different gear that is on top customisable (colours) and watch yourself run around. Particularly when playing a female character and using a nude mod. :-D
Red Dead Redemption had a zombie version. I got it, but tired of it rather quickly.
I remember that zombie level from CoD World at War, and this is similar, though there is no way to survive this by fighting, at least not at the skill level my characters currently are at, and you can't carry enough ammo to shoot them all, your only option is to board the windows up and keep after them, occasionally fighting the couple zombs who slip through. The reason (at least in this case) we couldn't just leave was that one person was injured and under a doctor's care, he couldn't be moved. When all was said and done, he died anyway, so pointless. The other times I've seen the same situation on videos were essentially the same thing, play nurse maid to boarded up windows until the arbitrary timer runs out or you fail and die. With the limited amount of characters, dying is a big deal, you only have a small pool of friends to continue the game with.
But, I'm getting use to the third person, or at least tolerating it. I've grabbed a crossbow mod that looks cool and I may install a master clock mod to make the nights shorter, because even with the lighting mod, nights are still dark. Forum posts just say to crank the brightness on the monitor. I say that's bad game design.
reminds me of a fc2 cheat: -GameProfile_timescale 0 :-()
Quote from: Art Blade on November 04, 2014, 11:14:13 AM
there's apparently some type of ongoing fascination for zombie games as they keep popping up like mushrooms after a rainfall.
It's the
The Walking Dead effect.
This TV show attracts legions of fans and started this recent wave of zombie games. One way or another, zombies have ever been around pop culture and videogames. The Return of the Living Dead (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089907/) as a classic trash 80's movies and the whole Resident Evil series since early 90's being examples on the top of my head. It so happened that TWD is the first successful TV show about zombies and today's pop culture is heavily based on continuously feeding the audience with what they want, so if the zombie apocalypse is today's special, everybody is having it. ????
As for the show.... meh.... I watch it just to criticize cuz it's not really good.
[insert thumbs down icon here]
I've only watched a couple episodes of The Walking Dead, and not starting from the beginning, was pretty much lost. It was OK, but not being emotionally invested in any of the characters, didn't care who died or not. Seemed to me to be more soap opera with zombies than anything IMO.
That's exaclty what it is: soap opera with zombies in the background.
It relies on cheap writing and predictable events to create situations where stereotyped characters interact.
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)
Me either. I'm not a fan of zombie stuff.
same :-D
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.
I like your both informative and satirical style, D_B :-D Makes me chuckle all the while :-D
Actually, +1 :-X for that ^-^
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.
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 :-()
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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iWtXp28F-Y#ws)
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. :laugh:
Nice video indeed. The game looks nice. :-X 8)
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.
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 :laugh:
Quote from: Dweller_Benthos on November 17, 2014, 08:08:01 AM
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.
:laugh: :-X looks like you were a Molotov expert in the video!
Can the zombies get to you while you're in the car?
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.
give the car keys to your buddy, tell him to go for a spin, and just watch him while he finds out. >:D
I think it funny that you can run them over so easy :-X
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 ;)
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.
Oh, indeed, I played thatone as well. But I wouldn't really call that a zombie game. More an apocalyptic open world game
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.
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?
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.
Quote from: Dweller_Benthos on November 19, 2014, 08:35:41 AM
... 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
Quote from: Dweller_Benthos on November 19, 2014, 08:21:19 AM
... I just made friends with her and haven't leveled her up yet.
:-D 8-X
??? :laugh:
Tch tch you two :-()
"State of Decay" seems to pretty much sum up most of the gaming scene at the moment ::)
at least those games that ain't broken when you get 'em. 8-X :-D
;)
Make sure to level up your friends, especially the female ones, amirite? LOL
But yeah, you generally don't have to w@&k much to keep the friends alive, unless you bring them out on missions, they stay pretty much secure. There may be a side mission where one gets in trouble, but so far I've ignored those and they come out OK. The fact that I had two die on me was a fluke and me not watching the map and seeing a horde so close.
Quote from: Dweller_Benthos on November 20, 2014, 07:44:58 AM
Make sure to level up your friends, especially the female ones, amirite? LOL
Sorry for the vulgar joke D_B, It's my own sick mind I know :angel:
I just sort of imagined that line about levelling up girlfriends in a completely different situation;
any different situation. That would be fun :-D
I thought it was funny, Binn, no probs. I hadn't thought of how I had said that, which makes me wonder if my dirty mind is losing it's edge, lol.
But, I started over with the new save again, not wanting to go back to the first one with 5 or 6 people now dead, so I'm being more careful this save to not get into situations that I can't get out of. Plus I'm doing the side missions more as they are where you get more reputation and experience and it gives you more credit with friends you have or toward making friends with the others that aren't at that level yet.
so, losing touch with the dirty part of your mind, are you? tsk tsk tsk.. :-D
About doing side missions that help level up your friends, that makes sense to me. Good idea doing that first and then staying out of those really messed-up situations, also a sound strategy :-D
I enjoy reading about your adventures and sidesteps, D_B :-() Keep it up :-X
Didn't have much time to play anything over the weekend, so only did a few zombie hunts and talked with the military guys. Which brings the point, there is one character you can play who has military background, and when that mission comes up, the hint is to send someone with military experience. My question is, what if you don't? Since the one character you have ends up knowing the army guy you meet because they served together, things go smoothly and you just leave. But what if you sent one of the other people, do the army guys start shooting? The game saves automatically every few minutes, so there's no way to save a game, then do something stupid, and then go back and try again.
I don't like the auto-save thing that you see in just about all games these days. Too much like the consoles.
play safely, save manually (an incremental backup every 10 minutes or some such..)
Yeah there is no manual save unfortunately, and since most games are written for consoles, then ported to PC, we just have to deal with it. Makes experimenting with risky tactics a bit more... risky lol.
tell me about it <looking at Assassin's Creed Unity> without backups, my then 45 hours game progress would have been lost completely.
The "Putting all your eggs in one basket" save format paradigm. Ugh.
Yeah, thought I lost my main guy last night, doing one of those carpentry missions where you board the windows up to survive a zombie swarm assault. One of the huge bloater zombies comes by in those missions and hits the whole building to break all the barricades at once. The NPC guy who was helping goes outside and takes on the bloater and gets in trouble, so I go out after him. The last time I tangled with one of these guys he tore me in half, so I was standing off a bit taking pot shots at him, when he rushed me and picked me up, I thought I was done for, but he just tossed me against the wall for some damage. I wonder if in those missions, the bloaters can't kill you, just hurt you? But without a save to fall back on, I'm not going to try it.
I see.. it kind of deprives you of your child instincts to play around with stuff until you either find out that it went well or that it bloody didn't. Well.. it's probably the scary part of the game they want to emphasise and not so much the exploration part.
Quote from: Art Blade on November 26, 2014, 12:36:22 PM
I see.. it kind of deprives you of your child instincts to play around with stuff until you either find out that it went well or that it bloody didn't.
That's it, exactly. Autosaving kills any incentive to experiment.