State of Decay: Lifeline Spotted At PAX

What it is: A very worthy expansion to one of the best zombie apocalypse simulators on the planet

What we saw at PAX: A complete rundown of what makes Lifeline tick, and why it isn't just more landmass tacked onto the original game

Since the original game was released last fall, our writers have played a silly amount of State of Decay, so we were all pretty excited when the Lifeline expansion was announced a couple of months ago. Needless to say, it was also one of the games we were most excited to see heading into PAX East.

Lifeline doesn't necessarily reinvent the State of Decay wheel; instead it makes it run much smoother by removing some of the odd rough edges that many people loved to nitpick from the original game. As a perfect example of what I'm talking about here, survivors will be much more distinctive and matter more in the grand scheme of things. That's not to say that each and every one of them will have a massively deep back story and motivations to match, but there's a good chance you'll end up caring about their survival far more this time around.

You'll also spend the entirety of Lifeline focused on building up and defending a single base of operations rather than feeling pressured to seek out larger or more conveniently located places to call home. This also means Undead Labs can add layers of escalation and intensity to gameplay as you'll need to move further away from your base to continue finding resources and rescuing additional survivors.

http://youtu.be/8mUjO28-Img

Some other things we're looking forward to is the ability to toss resources into vehicles and transport more at once. Smaller vehicles will be able to hold two packs in the trunk while larger vehicles can hold up to six. In fact, this will not only be a new addition in Lifeline, but will also be added to the original game as well which will help speed up some of the pacing of supply runs.

State of Decay is already a kick-ass gaming experience, and we'll be drilling down into why Lifeline ups the ante in an upcoming full-length preview.

source: PAX