Reviews

The zombies are back. Yet a-bloomin'-gain. But don't groan like the undead; instead shuffle out and pick up one of the year's most ambitious titles, period - State of Decay for the Xbox 360, available only on Xbox LIVE.

It's the kind of game we love. Not because it's about zombies - despite being buried up to our necks in the undead in recent years, we've still got a soft, gooey spot for burying a baseball bat in fetid grey matter. It's not because it features a genuine sandbox world either. No, it's because State of Decay's developer Undead Labs 'gets' the zombie genre and why it remains utterly relevant despite a crowded market place.

Like Telltale's superb The Walking Dead series, it's best to get the bad news out of the way first - no, the game doesn't feature the smoothest of frame rates at times, the camera can get a little, erm, wonky and yes, you can expect to see buggy bits such as zombie hordes clipping through scenery. But like Telltale's classic, who really gives a damn? State of Decay is about the atmosphere, the world and the sense of facing overwhelming odds and managing to survive another day.

A third-person open-world game, you and your buddy Ed are two hapless holidaymakers who return from a fishing trip to discover the world has gone to hell and the undead are eating people's intestines. As ever, you can expect to wield baseball bats, unload automatic weapons into the nearest rotting brainpan and at times, be forced to run away screaming. But thankfully, that's the tip of the iceberg/rotting meat mountain - because the real focus of this game is about creeping past the undead, sticking to the undergrowth and praying you're not spotted or more importantly heard as you noisily scavenge a deserted truck stop for supplies.

To survive, you're going to need to set up safe havens, make friends and allies, build up communities and hunt and gather resources to keep yourself and said community alive. You can use all manner of weapons and vehicles but you'll need to maintain them too or they'll break. Most important is you need to prepare yourself for your favourite character dying. It's not a problem because you are able to switch between the characters you befriend - but losing someone who you have spent hours levelling-up is tough. In a good way.

Ultimately, the best zombie games/books/films/TV shows/comics aren't about the undead. They're about the people fighting to survive a relentless onslaught and a hostile world of ever-diminishing resources - but most importantly, each other. State of Decay shows that Undead Labs understands this and despite the game's technical issues, it has cult classic stamped all over it. Why this wasn't released as a full-price standalone title is beyond us, but it makes State of Decay the bargain of the year so far. Ergo, you have no excuse not to sink your teeth into its succulent, stinking delights...