State of Decay returns in an HD remake for Xbox One.  While the original game was fun, it felt like it was missing some extra polish. Year One Survival Edition looks to complete that polish as best it can, and for the most part it actually succeeds in doing so. Though the lack of online play is still disheartening.

State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition is an 2015 action survival game. It is developed by Undead Labs and published by Microsoft Studios.

Kill the dead again.

Having put in a ton of hours into the original State of Decay on both PC & Xbox 360, I was excited when they announced an HD port for Xbox One. I always found the graphics for the original game to be fairly good looking, so there’s wasn’t much an HD upscale could really do, at least in my opinion, but the graphics upscale was only part of the new port. With Year One Survival Edition you Lifeline & Breakdown DLC, as well the new character that came with it.

Survival is key in State of Decay.

THE GOOD: State of Decay: YOSE is probably one of the most realistic zombie games you’ll ever play. You eat food, build & fortify shelter, and go town to town searching and aiding fellow survivors.  Overtime your character will lose health due to exhaustion, so you have to switch to another character to do work, oh and if one of your characters die, you’ll never be able to play as them again for that save file. The different variations of zombies was an cool addition to the game, and provided solid challenge.

Hordes felt like a legitimate danger to the character.

THE BAD: While it’s understandable that the first entry in State of Decay didn’t include online play, it’s still rather disappointing when you consider the core gameplay and open world. It was also somewhat difficult to get the hang of story progression.

Keep as many characters alive as you can.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: State of Decay brings one thing gamers have been clamoring for in zombie games; realism. You feel like a true survivor in a world full of the undead looking to feast on your flesh, along the way you meet and aid fellow survivors. The open world was much appreciated, but story progression was a little tough to get the hang of. The lack of online play was also a huge downer.