State of Decay 2 - Hands On Preview @ IGN

IGN checked out State of Decay 2 - the game will be released on May 22:

State of Decay 2 First Hands-On: Bigger, Better, and More RPG-y

The zombie-apocalypse-survival RPG doubles down on what it does best.

By Ryan McCaffrey My car was abandoned in the middle of the road somewhere behind me. I couldn’t go back for it even though I desperately wished I could. I had to bail out of it – while it was moving, mind you – because it was the dead of night and I didn’t see the Bloater standing in my path until he exploded on the front bumper, filling the cabin with noxious gas. I was left to limp up and around a mountain, as a straight-line path back to my community’s base just wasn’t possible. My health was critical. My stamina was exhausted because I hadn’t slept in two days and simply couldn’t run more than a few paces anymore. I figured my odds of surviving – and thus not losing valuable geocacher/masseuse Fulgencio Arellano permanently – were barely north of zero. Between my body, my mind, and my situation, I really was in a state of decay.
[…]
Permadeath, resource management, relationship building, vehicle procurement, maximizing your community’s skills, building outposts, trying to figure out which survivors are friends or foes – all of it and more are what made State of Decay special. And State of Decay 2 deepens all of these systems and more, with the result being a game the Undead Labs team had to peel me away from after I spent two days with it. It’s fair to wonder how it’s going to run on a stock Xbox One – I only played it on a high-end PC, to which an Xbox One X should compare nicely – but from what I’ve seen so far, State of Decay 2 may be a steal at $30. And playing it reminded me that, annoyingly, there haven’t been any State of Decay copycats in the five years since the first game. Thankfully, the real thing returns soon enough.

More information.

Sounds good, adding the right kind of stuff and, according to this article, getting rid of the terrible "feature" of having all your hard work go to hell because you couldn't play the game for two days.

I'll likely get this at some point, perhaps sooner than later.

I enjoyed the first game and I will be picking up SoD2. One of the best zombie survival games I have played.

Their first game was great, i probably spent over 100 hours playing it…but it was such a buggy god aweful mess when first released. I also hated how your game would simulate things while you werent playing, hopefully that has changed.
I’ll definately check this one out, im sure the company has grown and is now able to put out a much better product on release.

This was a decent surprise, game was at it's best when something unexpected threw you off the track and you had to improvise.
After a while it got kind of repetitive and you could exploit the game pretty easily. They've got a solid foundation to improve here: make character stats matter more, balance resources and more variety to emergent gameplay.

Originally Posted by RickTheWatch
Their first game was great, i probably spent over 100 hours playing it…but it was such a buggy god aweful mess when first released. I also hated how your game would simulate things while you werent playing, hopefully that has changed.
I’ll definately check this one out, im sure the company has grown and is now able to put out a much better product on release.

Has the first game been patched up pretty well? I would like to try it before the 2nd game comes out.

Yeah it was in pretty decent shape last time i played it. I would definately give it a go. It was still a little rough around the edges but i havent played it for a while, im sure patching continued even after i was done with the game.
The permadeath really makes for some really suspensful situations!

There was some controversy surrounding the first game. They basically did some minor improvements to the original game, patched it a little, included all the DLC, and then sold it again as "State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition". And to entice their old customers to buy it again, they stopped supporting the old version, which of course annoyed a good chunk of them. And to make matters worse, some of the bugs were never fixed in either version.

Being on Windows store, i already put it on not to buy list. I dislike the Windows store current state and until MS actually does something to make it appealing, i am not gonna buy anything from there.

I didn't know that. GFWL was awful, and I hear the new Windows store is just more of the same type of crap. If it isn't sold on Steam or GOG, I'll also be taking a pass.

I liked the first game but dindn't enjoy the lack of any main npc. The game also continued to play itself when you didn't. By that I mean when you turned the game off.

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
I didn't know that. GFWL was awful, and I hear the new Windows store is just more of the same type of crap. If it isn't sold on Steam or GOG, I'll also be taking a pass.

Yeah I also didn't like that you had to use GFWL, and it looks like this will be another WIN 10 store game. Though the first game was sold on Steam, and hopefully the second will.