I'm surprised and amazed at the grinding argument based on the unfounded assumption that Dead State is full of it. What I find disturbing is how passionately that argument is made by people who have yet to give the game a try, let alone actually comprehend what they read.
Having sunk 15+ hours into the 7-days demo / Beta, I can echo Brian Mitsoda's quote on how it works, word for word:
"While loot is random, enemies are pre-determined, but zombies can always be attracted to the map if you make too much noise."
Ie. Enemies, zombies and humans alike, are pre-determined. If there are any humans or zombies in a location upon your arrival, they are hand-placed in finite numbers. But if you go about breaking doors and stuff and guns a'blazing, more zombies will come, as logic would dictate it.
But let me say anyway that it is exactly how I have expected it to work based on the exact same explanations he has made in the past, prior to the release of the first demo and also is exactly how it did work. Not grindy at all, especially not by the standards of any game released in the last 20+ years.
~o~
Anyway, what disappoints me about the game is the discrepancy between their references, their goals and how simplistic the game actually is. I understand; limited resources + simple game but I really don't think they are playing it to the right audience with game mechanics on this one. I enjoy the game but it still feels fairly like a console game.
- No tile-based environmental fog of war; you magically know every in and out of a building the moment you enter any part of it. All the tension and mystery of exploring buildings are gone the moment you enter one. Not to mention all the debris and decals in the outdoors (I'm excusing the building lay out itself).
- Dodgy camera and reveal/hide switch between indoors and outdoors.
- Dodgy LOS through glass doors and windows.
- No shooting through glass doors and windows.
- No crouching/crawling to avoid being seen through windows.
- No choice to sneak/walk/run during combat, which is quite an affront for a zombie game, I think. All combat movement is standard.
- No mechanics for zombies piling up on and breaking doors and maybe PCs holding a door off.
- Shitload of non-combat resource items that you should be able to use for other simple purposes in locations but you can not (eg. you should be able to throw any item around to make noise, to attract or divert attention at the risk of spoiling or breaking it, with the throwing distance, difficulty and chance of spoiling/breaking based on the item).
- Dodgy grid and character selection.
- Silly and uninteresting carry limit. When a character hits his carrying capacity, he's fixed on the ground. Absolutely no gradual scaling up until that movement, which eliminates more interesting scenarios as "do I drop some of this stuff to save my ass or do I risk my life taking everything?". That's basically one of the staples of the zombie genre, one of many which DoubleBear is entirely skipping every so easily.
Perhaps I should elaborate on these on their forum.
Still, I need to say that it's the closest thing to what I have been waiting for years.
