Dead State - Review Roundup

killias2

Disastrous Fate
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In addition the Rock Paper Shotgun posted a few days ago, there have been a few other interesting reviews:

Eurogamer gives it a 7/10:

There's nothing here that can't be fixed with a few well aimed patches and balancing tweaks however. For all its lack of technical polish, there's nothing game breaking and even as the challenge diminishes in direct proportion to your playing time, the stories that come out of the cast of broad appealing archetypes will keep you on the wheel through another day and night cycle.

Nothing much to look at, and with a premise that has been dulled through repetition, Dead State is a game that requires you to approach it with an open mind and a forgiving nature. Make the effort, and you'll find a game that makes up in charm what it lacks in polish.
Gamefront, similarly, gives it a 70/100:

I’m sure future patches will resolve these problems, and the majority of them tend not to be game-breaking. But it does prevent Dead State from feeling quite as polished as it could have been.

That aside, Dead State remains a solid and engaging experience into which RPG and survival fans will sink hours. It may not have ended up being the first, but Doublebear has certainly earned its place among the zombie survival greats.
The Caring and Feeding of Nerds has also had an in depth look:

But it makes me wonder: why not leave it in Early Access to give the polish it deserved and needed? This isn’t AAA; there are no arbitrary deadlines set by demanding overlords and, from where I sit, it seems the hasty removal of the Early Access label hurt Dead State's release more than it helped. I know lots of games have Day 1 patches, even major titles like Dragon Age Inquisition. DoubleBear certainly is not working with the same level of resources as EA and Bioware, but how did this become an industry standard even for Indies?


Before I go back to boarding up the windows and stockpiling canned goods along with other non-perishables, I want to stress that I DO recommend picking up Dead State. Don’t let my remarks in the paragraph above drive you off from what I feel is a worthwhile game. While most zombie games are about action or horror, ultimately Dead State is a narrative-heavy game that is as much about how pockets of humanity can cope with disasters on a scale they can’t possibly control as it is about killing zombies and making experience bars go up.
More information.
 
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I agree with most of the comments in the reviews. It is not finished, and it shows. If you like the main idea, wait for several patches, and when it is on sale... I doubt they will ever be able to address the main flaws (stupid AI, inconsequential zombies, repetitive game play), but nevertheless it can be fun for what it is.
 
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I have played it. It looks like this war of mine. Gameplay is divided in the base/management phase, in which you build your defences/facilities and manage your crew's issues/dialogues/craft/take missions and assign jobs. Then you choose a squad, with which your main character will scavenge. You equip them and off you go. Time will pass while you travel the world map, which can be made on foot/on horseback/by car. You should be back before night time or you'll hurt morale.
When scavenging you'll look for supplies like fuel, materials and food to keep the shelter going.
Combat is turn based and the zombies are pretty easy. Humans are the real problem but I found it quite easy. In spite of some minor issues with the UI, the interface was serviceable at best.
Story is quite passable but I found the dialogues entertaining.
Graphics look like something from 2005. Didn't bother me though.
My biggest gripe was the inventory system. It's so confusing and hard to use I really had a hard time adapting. A real chore, it was extremely unintuitive.
As a big fan of survival games and of this war of mine (which is much better imo) I was pleased with the game. Despite these flaws I'd recommend it.
 
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The estimation that a few well aimed patches will cure the current state is extremelly optimistic not to say something else.

The narration hangs in a vaccuum at the moment and it is not supported by what happens parallely through the gameplay.

One example: at some points in the story, the player is asked to give an amount of resources. Some of these points are critical moments. They happen after weeks in the progression.

Where the gameplay should lead the player to:
  • Resources to be shared meant people die or were infected to collect them
  • The amount to be given is half, third, a quarter, a fifth of what the shelter harbours
  • The amount to be given is the double (or something like that) of what is consumed every day in the shelter
Where the current gameplay leads the player to:
  • Resources to be shared mean no people die or were infected to collect them
  • The amount to be given is 1/25 th (one twenty fifth)of what the shelter harbours
  • The amount to be given is half of what is consumed every day in the shelter

The consequence is immediate: surrendering your resources means nothing for the player. It is a no cost decision.
Actually, reading every time that the asking party thought they were asking the moon put a smile on my face. If they knew that the group has concentrated so much of the wealth of the map in the shelter, they wont bother asking, they would immediately attack to get what they need instead of starving.
The game carries other moments like this one:
In one run, when things were going so well, the shelter turned into a holiday inn. Nothing to do all day long but relaxing in the leisure room, going fishing and harvesting fruits etc The situation lasted for weeks.
One guy is skilled in fishing because fishing was the hobby before the apocalypse.
Then one day, he popped in, starting to complain that life was too harsh, that he was taking too much risk and that he wanted more food to represent that.
No line in the option represented what I thought on the moment, tell the guy to relax, that the world was collapsing around and that the people at the shelter had it easy, fishing all day long,watching dvds, reading books, smoking cigars, sipping on bourbon. Maybe the longest holiday the guy had in his life.
If you add to that that the guy has the right skin colour, then the situation was hilarious.

The point of the state of release is spot on.
The gameplay is to be built from bottom to top but the rest?
The current version is an excellent way to browse the content. Because the player's decisions are not flagged properly. That means that when you take a decision, you might see the content associated to an other option. That relieves from taking the decision to see what happens.

I wonder if all those bugs were present in the beta and if they slipped through or were ignored.

In all cases, it does not do a favour to the product. It helps browsing the content but players who want the narration to reflect their choice might not appreciate the switch.
 
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The reason they released it was because they ran out of money. Contrarily to the Age of Decadence people who have largely done this as a side project in their leisure time over many years they are trying to build an income stream.

I don't think the game is fixable because the problem is the barren environments. I have played for more than 60 hours now and I am still looting and exploring a lot more locations. The problem is that 95% of them are utterly generic and forgettable and serve no purpose other than to be pilfered. You play this game to be surprised and yet have to unearth tons of rubble to find any.

I can't understand why they didn't cut a good 66% of the cut and paste environments with the same 5-6 templates over and over again and focus on making the rest more interesting and with more interaction, puzzles and RPG gameplay. I never got fed up of using an inventory so far but with Dead State here we are. It's become incredible tedium.

This is definitely something that Vince has got right with Age of Decadence: take all the time in the world to polish your content and make few environments but really interesting ones full of surprises that will make the gameplay shine.
 
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When I read mainstream review scores that are 10 or 100 based, I subtract 5 or 50 but then make the result out of half. So a 7 out of 10 becomes 2/5 or 40%. Why? Most mainstream guys aren't as picky as I am :) I'd give Dead State 40% in its current iteration.
 
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When I read mainstream review scores that are 10 or 100 based, I subtract 5 or 50 but then make the result out of half. So a 7 out of 10 becomes 2/5 or 40%. Why? Most mainstream guys aren't as picky as I am :) I'd give Dead State 40% in its current iteration.

Have you actually played it? ;)
 
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Oh yeah, probably about 30 hours or so. It is fun at first but gets repetitive very fast. The problem is that it wants to be a story game but the mechanics force you to deal with the cookie cutter locations.
 
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I am enjoying Dead State quite a bit. The game does get harder later. The zombies are never much of a threat if you are careful with one exception. The real threat are the people. This is sort of a staple in zombie "lit", too. Think of The Walking Dead; the walkers are the backdrop against with the people stories take place.

I am about 45 game days in and have lost my main character 3 times (you have to reload then) and all 3 were to groups of people. One group of foes I tried (some soldiers at a military base) about 6 times with different tactics and equipment and lost all 6 times so really I guess it is 8 times. I just started running into some guys who use heavy "armor" and swords (!) and they are tricky to defeat, too.

The one zombie exception is when you, or other people, make a lot of noise. I almost lost my whole group to some stupid looters who started blazing away at my guys with pistols and shotguns and drew in all the zombies on the map (and then some) while I was still fighting the looters. I had two people bleeding out when the battle ended and one of them was my main healer.

The loot you find is somewhat random which can also affect difficulty. I restarted when they screwed up the patch a couple weekends ago (I was going to restart anyway) and I got to a spot where I had found some tactical combat armor (I think that's what it was called, it had AC 12!) and this time there was just a ballistics vest (AC 3). The second time I also found almost none of a couple of the morale boosting items and not as much fuel so I ran out of fuel for a while, one of the allies ran off because of low morale, and I thought another was going to off herself. The first time I had lots of extra fuel and a whole different array of loot at the same point in the game. Later the "flu" also struck and I lost most of my best allies for 5 days right when I was in the midst of some crucial stuff.

There are still quite a few annoying minor bugs and limitations and several serious ones. The worst bug right now is that 5 of my people have statuses that should be healable by staying in the "hospital" but it doesn't work. Looking at the people when they are in the hospital shows they have the same status dozens of times (so many times it goes off the screen) and each one is listed as taking 11 hours to fix. The worst limitation is that you can't access allies' inventory when they are at the school.
 
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You can access allies inventory while at the school. You do this from the stockroom. When in there, you're character name has a dropdown that allows you to equip everyone at the school. I unequip everyone after each mission so that my away team always has the best gear.
 
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Sounds like it needs some more work before I jump into it.
 
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Consequent patch on the way to be released this day. Should resolve all major issues plus minor issues.
 
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The reason they released it was because they ran out of money. Contrarily to the Age of Decadence people who have largely done this as a side project in their leisure time over many years they are trying to build an income stream.

I don't think the game is fixable because the problem is the barren environments. I have played for more than 60 hours now and I am still looting and exploring a lot more locations. The problem is that 95% of them are utterly generic and forgettable and serve no purpose other than to be pilfered. You play this game to be surprised and yet have to unearth tons of rubble to find any.

I can't understand why they didn't cut a good 66% of the cut and paste environments with the same 5-6 templates over and over again and focus on making the rest more interesting and with more interaction, puzzles and RPG gameplay. I never got fed up of using an inventory so far but with Dead State here we are. It's become incredible tedium.

This is definitely something that Vince has got right with Age of Decadence: take all the time in the world to polish your content and make few environments but really interesting ones full of surprises that will make the gameplay shine.

Plus the boring gameplay, mediocre animations, unoriginal presentation. The team could have probably made it in a 2D form. 3D was too much for them: requires too much coding and animations / collision / AI movement & path-finding in 3D space.
 
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You can access allies inventory while at the school. You do this from the stockroom. When in there, you're character name has a dropdown that allows you to equip everyone at the school. I unequip everyone after each mission so that my away team always has the best gear.

I tried the same thing you do while on a mission. Doh! This will make things a lot easier and require a lot fewer trips to the nearby hardware store.
 
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I tried the same thing you do while on a mission. Doh! This will make things a lot easier and require a lot fewer trips to the nearby hardware store.

I didn't know this either. I have been loading gear up on my main character and handing it out at the start of each location. This will make things much easier. Thanks for the info, Crpgnut.

Despite it's clunkiness, I have been enjoying Dead State quite a bit. If you like no-frills survival games, Neo Scavenger was officially released today. Micromanagers rejoice.
 
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The patch was not released.

On the generic locations: it is hard to tell because with this current version, there is no resistance to the player's will to loot and collect resources.
The story has its own pace with events coming up at a certain date so it means that the player is left with a lot of time to explore every single location.

I tried to match the pace of the storytelling by messing the scavenging runs, taking only a little at a time, taking several days to loot alocation etc

As a consequence, the shelter had fewer members etc If a barrier is raised between the player and the loot, leading the player to fail scavenging runs, it could turn totally different with the player unable to hit every single location on the map.

When trying this way, I found out that it is totally possible that not going out every day to scavenge might be a serious option to consider. Another thing to consider: rotation in the scavenging team etc

The gameplay is nascent at the moment. If it expands, it might turn out that it is not possible to go out to scavenge every single place during a playthrough.

That would decrease the generic dimension of locations.
 
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Plus the boring gameplay, mediocre animations...
I think the animations are quite good. The flurry with the bladed weapon, the zombie lunge/bite with the character fighting them off are very good. They were generated with a motion capture system. There's just not enough of them.

It is amazing thought to see the 2D games made with Torque, like Steam Marines, just because they're so completely different.
 
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