The zombie genre in the video game industry may have started with the original 1996 Resident Evil game, but it was during the early to mid-2010s when the genre saw its popularity rise to greater heights.
Popular media at the time seemingly caught a virus that made it obsessed with any zombie-related entertainment. These include TV shows like AMC's "The Walking Dead," Brad Pitt's "World War Z," and various video games like Plants vs. Zombies and Telltale's The Walking Dead.
While pop culture saturated the genre with many entries, there is one game that gave people the experience of surviving in a zombie apocalypse with other people without it relying on online gameplay.
That game is State of Decay.
State of Decay History, Features
As such, players can recruit survivors from small enclaves to beef up their security and expand the list of characters they can play as; players can't use the same character for too long as the game's mechanics would force them to switch to another sooner or later.
These survivors can improve their skills as players take them out to the field, but if they're not careful, zombies could kill them, permanently removing them from the game.
State of Decay Reception, Additional Features
Despite the opportunities it provides, State of Decay is one game where critics and gamers didn't see eye-to-eye in some cases. Many critics, like Hooked Gamers and PC Powerplay, lauded the game's mechanics, per Metacritic; players appreciated what the game offers, but its bugs and seemingly mandatory use of a controller on the PC didn't help the game's case in the gaming community.
As a result, the game got a Metascore of 79 and a user score of 6.9. Thankfully, Undead Labs and Microsoft Studios worked on the game and made it as playable on PC as possible. It even released two new modes for players to enjoy: Breakdown is the game's sandbox mode, where they can do what they want without being restricted by the game's plot.
Lifeline, meanwhile, gives players a taste of what military life could be like during the zombie apocalypse and what's to come in its sequel, State of Decay 2.
