State of Decay 2 preview – why you should be excited about this terrifying zombie horror

I'VE always quite looked forward to the prospect of a zombie apocalypse. Need a fearless survivor? I'm your guy.

So to my surprise, much of my four-hour stint on brutally realistic horror game State of Decay 2 was spent cowering in fear as the living dead tried to turn me into a lunchtime snack.

State of Decay 2 is the latest title to come out of Microsoft Studios and Undead Labs, and is a direct sequel to the 2013 game of the same name.

The subject is hardly revolutionary: you're a survivor in a world populated by reanimated corpses, and they're desperate to chow down on your noggin.

But unlike the countless zombie movies and games you've seen and played before, State of Decay 2 doesn't have a plot.

Instead you create your own story.

You're dropped into a world with minimal resources and a will to avoid being eaten.

There are three major areas to explore, all of which were based on small-town America, game creators told The Sun.

You've got a farmland region, an arid zone, and an area of foothills beneath a mountain – all rendered in glorious 4K quality, if you've got a powerful Xbox One X.

There's no formal questline, so you just have to roam the lands collecting resources (like food, medicine and building materials) to better your chances of survival.

Along the way, you'll meet other survivors who you can recruit, building up a community.

Once you've got other members in your posse, they become playable – you can switch to them whenever you like.

But the catch is that death is permanent: if a squadmate dies, they're gone forever.

So to keep the brain-munchers away, you can scout and occupy a safehouse. There, you can live in relative safety, topping stray zombies that make it past your fortifications.

As the game goes on, you'll eventually build several safehouses and a host of outposts, all of which will help you navigate the troubled streets of this terrifying world.

And terrifying it really is.

A colourful cavalcade of living dead endlessly roams the streets, desperate to take a bite out of you.

Stay far enough away and keep quiet, and you'll be fine.

But rummage through a drawer too quickly, break a window or start up a car engine and you'll soon find yourself being swarmed by curious gut-gobblers.

Some zombies aren't even that scary.

Undead Labs design director Richard Foge told us the most basic zombie is a slow type inspired by George Romero flicks, like Night of the Living Dead.

Next up is the "basic fast" type, which aren't especially stronger or more difficult to kill, but move far quicker.

Then there are the armoured types, which are "ex-military" – they come donning body armour and helmets.

They're a little trickier to take down, because you have to break through the helmet before you can squash some zombie brains.

Still, we dispatched enough of these chompy gits to learn they're hardly a sweat.

But then we get to the "freaks", as Foge calls them.

These are tougher zombies with unique skills that make your life very difficult.

Screamers, for instance, will let out a terrible bellow that stuns you and attracts all of the half-dead hobblers in the local area.

There are also bloaters, which are tough to take down, and ferals, which are "glass cannon" types that fall easily but move extremely quickly – making them tough to hit.

Finally, there are juggernauts, which are absolutely huge (and enormously powerful). Smashing them with the bonnet of your car is a good way to dispatch them, but you'll completely wreck your vehicle in the process.

Generally, we found the best method to getting around was by avoiding large herds of zombies – or scarier "freaks" – completely.

Knocking out one or two zombies is really easy; bonk them on the head with an axe and you won't even need to fire a bullet.

But even "basic slow" zombies can be a deadly threat when they start to swarm you in groups of five or six.

And once you start spraying off with a machine gun, you'll soon find that the group of five or six has grown to 20 bloodthirsty zombies clamouring for your innards.

This is by design – the game punishes stupidity increasingly severely as it progresses.

Here's a good point to note a main feature of the game: you don't really win.

State of Decay 2 is designed to be a "hobby" for gamers, Foge tells us, saying it's "something to play forever".

The game constantly changes and adapts, throwing up new scenarios.

So you might have visited a location dozens of times before, but this one time you might be low on petrol and ammo, and a Juggernaut has set up shop. Suddenly you're at real risk of losing a member of your community forever, unless you play it smart.

There's also a major The Sims element to the game – you have to keep your community well-fed and happy.

If you start running low on food and your recruits start dying, morale will soon drop.

That ramps up the pressure, so much so that we were forced to go on a late-night outing to track down a food-collection outpost.

Knowing you have to make your way through a horde of zombies to stop your mates from dying is pretty stressful.

And the fear that you could permanently die and harm your community even more makes it doubly terrifying.

Every movement you make in State of Decay 2 is a balancing act – is the reward worth the risk?

I've only played the game for a few hours, but I'm already desperate to dive back in and see how long I can fare in this unforgiving world.

But making progress will be difficult given that I'll probably be too scared to play the game after dark...

The State of Decay 2 release date is currently set for May 22, 2018 on Xbox One and Windows PC. We'll have a full State of Decay 2 review once we've played the game more.

What's your favourite horror game? Let us know in the comments!

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