Finished the game. My thoughts on Dead State Reanimated as a whole

[evilwillhunting]

I'd give it a solid B. It was mostly a mixed bag for me, but generally good, and at times, great. Here's my breakdown of the good and bad, your mileage may vary:

GOOD: Well fleshed out characters and interactions.
The characters are all written pretty believably: these aren't zombie-slaying commandos, these are (mostly civilians) who are adapting to this changed world. Few of them have "superstar" stats, but they can grow in time to be better. And the ones who do have big merits usually have big drawbacks too.

BAD: Lifeless base.
Yes, you have morning daily events, and occasionally will see a character interaction. But for the rest of the time in the base: nothing. Nothing happens. People just mill around. It makes the base feel artificial. Just putting in some of these events at different times of the day would break up the tedium.

GOOD: Character self-leveling.
This is a design choice the game makes to break away from the traditional CRPGs. Instead of molding each NPC into what you want them to be, they really mold into what THEY want to be, sometimes taking your suggestions into account. This feels more organic than the typical "I control every level up" thing.

BAD: Morale boost limits.
When a character is feeling bad, you can give him specific items, or assign him to the rec room for a day. That's pretty much it. It really would be better if you can do things that affect all morales across the board -- Aggro's concert didn't do jack but raise her morale slightly, for instance. That seems like a miss. Seems like there should have been much, much more we could do on this front.

GOOD: The Tactical Maps
Very well done. Not only are there a very wide array of locations, they are all built deftly and even tell tragic stories (the bloody crib, the police cruisers scattered in front of the Bullseye store, the FBI vans by the police station). Each location felt unique and featured great construction.

BAD: The lack of tactical options in the battle maps
This is a biggie. Cover mechanics and stealth do not exist in this game, which seems like a MASSIVE oversight in a tactical turn-based RPG. Furthermore, there is no "overwatch" or even basic awareness: if you the player dont enter battle mode before the zombie closes into arm's length, he gets a free attack, even though the PCs are looking right at him. Adding these elements would have done wonders to make the combat more enjoyable and tactical, not just a matter of a toe-to-toe slugfest every single time.

GOOD: The massive roster / Time limits
As this is a hard game, you're going to go through a lot of survivors. In most games of this ilk, there's only 8-15 recruitable characters. But in this game, there's close to forty. And no arbitrary limits to your community size (always a factor in games like this) means that you can make your community as big as you want, as long as you can feed everybody. That's pretty nice. Finally, some characters have time limits to discover: if you don't come across them in time, they'll leave or die, and you'll miss out on them. That makes the game feel like a living and realistic environment, and was a really nice touch: sitting at home for a day now has bigger stakes, as you may have lost your opportunity to find another survivor.

BAD: The Ending
The ending stunk. I know you can say that a zombie apocalypse game usually doesn't vary much from the formula, but I still felt cheated. The armageddon element appears out of the blue for the last ten days, then a splash screen, and that's that. Seems like a lot more work should have gone into tying this up, as this game takes dozens of hours investment to play. The bus battle was quite tough and very memorable, but the military evac ending requires nothing at all but just to travel to a location on the map. It reminded me of Xenonauts: after a hard, hard campaign, your reward is a splash screen, and that's that.

GOOD: Weapon effect attacks
Using stagger attacks, knockdown attacks and so forth was a nifty touch and adds more flair to the melee combat.
BAD: Boring zombies
While there's roughly a dozen zombie model/name variations for the zeds, they really dont behave at all differently. Shamble forward and do the same grapple/attack. After a while battling the legions of the dead becomes downright boring.

GOOD: The Austin Hotel / Mall
In a game where there are occasionally 2-3 levels, here's a level with an astounding eight! Packed with goodies, to boot.
BAD: Indoor combat
Buttt the hotel has the worst features of the indoor combat: pinched off corridors (the stairwells come to mind here, making it so only one character can shoot back while the mercs unload on him as a group), the line of sight/shooting restrictions, and the extremely cramped quarters are unnecessarily annoying to deal with.

GOOD: The random encounters
Not only random battles with hostile factions, the game sprinkles in some offbeat and quirky events too, which makes it feel like a draw from a random deck instead of a by-rote "random combat because you're moving through the map" mechanic. That was nice and kept the random encounters feeling fresh.
BAD: No XP for Combat
Posted before: if you dont get XP nor any decent items from combat (especially random combat), it's no longer fun, but a resource-draining chore. I understand how this was a design choice to stop players from grinding themselves up into combat gods, but it really took a lot of fun out of battles that really didn't help you at all.

GOOD: The game took a lot of design risks to make it different from the normal fare. Sometimes it didn't work (see above) but I really do admire how they tried to make something that broke conventions. It was refreshing.
BAD: The BUGS. This is why the game didn't get a B+. A professionally made and distributed game should never be crashing this much, particularly since this studio was led by a duo who were experienced in computer game creation.


I still feel like this game needed another year or so in development to tweak out the problems and to enrich some areas, and it would have been a breakout success. I'm still happy I played the game, and was entertained by it, but I couldn't help but feel it was on the cusp between mediocrity and greatness.

Anyway I'd like to hear what you guys think. What I think is bad may be good from your perspective. How did you like it?

[Umbrella Incorporated]

I love Dead State! If they ever made another one I'f fight tooth and nail to be first in line to throw my money at them!

[Crazed Possum]

Originally posted by Umbrella Incorporated:

I love Dead State! If they ever made another one I'f fight tooth and nail to be first in line to throw my money at them!

+1

[Doc Josh]

I'm with you: writing and characters can go a long way to forgiving bugs and gameplay missteps (see also the incredible "House of Many Doors") in my books, and this game had some of my favourite writing I've seen in a game.