It seems like the story in “State of Decay” is continuing on without me at the helm.Īt first I thought this surprising non-interactivity only applied to the hypertext, or what gamers call the “story line missions,” but I was surprised to find that the enforced linearity of the plot also applies to the open world elements and the simulation components as well - in a very ambitious way. As I was puzzling over this, the Wilkersons gave me some gifts. Yet Lilly’s dialogue was the same as in my first playthrough, when I was pro-Wilkersons. Unlike my first play-through, I had done everything possible to be against the Wilkersons. Wait, I thought, I just told the Wilkersons to go to hell! Doesn’t Lilly realize that? After a while, my ally and narrator Lilly told me: “ I really don’t think we should be getting into bed with the Wilkersons.” She goes on in this vein for some time.įor me, this was a jarring bit of NPC dialogue. The achievement here, as is true for many other popular games like Grand Theft Auto, is really in execution - bringing together a lot of things that have existed in games before, but getting them to work well together.Īs I eagerly waded into my second play-through, I hit a speed bump. Every concept in there is ripped off from some other zombie media franchise, sometimes with a wink (Twinkie snacks! Rule #1: Cardio!) and sometimes not. And State of Decay looked good - in the words of the producer, “The game is basically a giant simulation.”įorget SimCity - there’s no tame discussion of municipal zoning rules here! State of Decay (Click to enlarge.)Ĭertainly everything else in State of Decay isn’t novel. So, I thought: Why not teach about simulation with a zombie survival sim? Seems like a novel approach that would usefully get us away from SimCity. Simulation is a fascinating and important topic in relation to games. The best type of storytelling in a videogame is the type of storytelling that makes videogames unique: me in a sandbox of possibility, making stories out of my own choices.Īlso, the idea of a “zombie survival sim” is itself an achievement.
The Last of Us and The Walking Dead ), and many reviewers have praised the basic concept of a “ zombie survival sim.” As Tom Chick writes in praise of this game at Quarter to Three: Why are people excited about it? It gets a lot of credit for emphasizing gameplay as opposed to wordy narrative (cf. I like the game, it is a terrific achievement. I evaluated it for my Play and Technology syllabus (see the last post ). It is an excellent game that has also reviewed well. It’s the same situation in State of Decay, the open-world zombie apocalypse survival game that has broken all sales records since its release on Xbox 360 arcade last June. It’s actually a cut-scene disguised as gameplay. They’re on a short loop of repeated banging and screaming that it is easy to see, if you stand and look. The door opens on a timer. The splicer/zombies never break through the glass. That was close.īut was it close? If you stay in the room you’ll quickly discover that the whole thing was a sham of interactivity.
Luckily, just as it felt like the splicers would break through, the sometime-ally and narrator (Atlas) managed to open the locked door of my trap by radio or something and I was free to run away. I guessed that the game wouldn’t kill me outright at this point… but who knows? So it was with a rising sense of panic that I scoured the walls, desperate for a tooltip, for escape, for anything.
When I played this, I frantically searched for something to do. (Very dramatic!) You’re still trapped in the room, and if it is your first play-through you probably don’t want to fight this mob. So tell me, friend, which one of the bitches sent you, the KGB wolf or the CIA jackal? Here’s the news: … Andrew Ryan isn’t a giddy socialite who can be slapped around by government muscle, and with that, farewell, or Dasvadinya -– whichever you prefer.Īt the speech’s conclusion, a gang of “splicers” (think: zombies) runs up to the other side of the safety glass and starts pounding on it and screaming. Through a wall of safety glass windows, a television monitor lights up and delivers a preening speech from your antagonist–a speech worthy of a James Bond super-villian in a closing scene. See also: the first post ( Writing the Casual Games Syllabus).Īs you’re making your way through the end of the first level of Bioshock (one of the most critically-acclaimed video games of all time and one that defined its own genre: objectivist FPS), you’ll be abruptly trapped in a small room when your enemy (Atlas) slams a remote-controlled door.
This is the second post in a series on teaching about games in higher education.