State of Decay: Lifeline Review

State of Decay: Lifeline, the latest DLC pack for Undead Labs' zombie apocalypse game (original review here), replaces the rural surroundings of Trumbull Valley with the urban sprawl of Danforth, and your team of civilian survivors with a crack military unit on a mission.

In Lifeline, you take command of Greyhound One, a military team sent into Danforth to extract a high profile scientist who may be the key to unravelling this whole 'zombie apocalypse' mess. When this goes wrong, your team must bunker down in the city in order to track down and extract various other VIPs who may be able to piece together the good doctor's research.

From the very beginning of Lifeline, there is a noticeable difference in the way the game is to be approached. Your small initial unit has enough military grade hardware and ammunition to start a small war, and unlike the vanilla game, where guns tend to be a last resort when melee fails, you'll find yourself relying quite heavily on firearms here.

Your soldiers are also well trained, and even new recruits will usually be proficient in either melee or firearms (or both), so can start kicking ass as soon as their boots hit the ground.

Scavenging is less of an issue too. Provided you can keep earning influence points - by completing missions, clearing infestations, destroying hordes, etc. - you'll be able to use them as currency in order to arrange supply drops from central HQ. Drops vary depending on how much you invest: from small parcels of food and medicine, to crates stocked with military-grade weapons and ammo.

The reduced need to scavenge, combined with the access to firepower and the skill to employ it, means your team is going to be on the offensive. You have a mission to complete, and staying dug in isn't going to make that happen.

As well as the VIP extraction missions, there are also civilians in trouble, and you'll receive messages via a pirate radio station letting you know their location and status. As rescuing these unfortunates is not part of your objective, there is no penalty for ignoring them, except maybe bad karma. Rescuing civilians will get you influence points and morale boosts, and maybe some supplies, but they will be a drain on your resources until they are extracted.

Other missions include rescuing stranded soldiers, who are added to your character pool and base defences, and hunting special infected types with a badass special forces psycho, callsign: 'Sasquatch'.

Danforth makes a nice change of pace from the more rural Trumbull Valley setting, with its urbanised environments allowing for a greater concentration of zombies. The majority of the city in inaccessible, either being blocked off completely, or simply so crowded with zombies as to make even short term survival impossible. The majority of the action will be centred on the locations surrounding the circular highway surrounding the city, which will also function as your main route of navigation.

Despite being fairly small, the map encompasses a wide range of different environments, from suburban residential neighbourhoods, to industrial estates and military installations. Your extraction missions will take you to many of these locations, but finding everything of interest will still require exploration off the beaten path.

While a normal game of State of Decay will reward patient play, in which you slowly hoard resources and build up your base, Lifeline's military operation is reliant on speed and efficiency. Periodically, the danger level will increase and when it does your base, designation: Black Friday, will be attacked by a stream of zombies breaking out from the inner city danger zones. During these assaults, you must prevent Black Friday from being overrun by one of several waves of zombies by using mines, propane tanks, fireworks, guns and close combat weapons.

It's important that you make it back to base before a siege begins, as your AI compatriots are not particularly efficient and rely on you to do the lions share of the fighting. Any rescued civilians or VIPs must also be defended, as the extraction helicopter only appears once a wave is completed, and they can be killed during an assault. Perhaps more importantly, any VIPs that have not been rescued from the city will be lost when the zombies exit the city centre, so it's important that you complete as many rescue missions as possible between attacks. Losing too many VIPs means game over.

Despite the abundance of weapons and ammo, as well as the fact your player characters and allies are all soldiers, Lifeline still manages to be more challenging than the core package. The time restrictions find you taking more risks, and the increased zombie count adds more danger. However, the true danger comes in the form of the base attacks and most players, at least on their first run through, will find themselves losing a few soldiers in the chaos of these battles. Numbers are thin as it is, and each loss will hurt you and make future operations more difficult.

One general addition added alongside the DLC seems minor, but makes a great tactical difference, and this is the ability to load goods into the back of vehicles. By interacting with a car or truck you can access its inventory and use it to store scavenged items and materials. This makes a scavenging run more practical with a small outfit, without having to call in for scavenger support, but also increases the risk of losing the entire haul, in the event that the vehicle is lost.

Another addition is made in the form of changed outposts. In Lifeline, outposts can be set in military locations such as artillery sites and communication stations. These outposts will add the ability to call in airstrikes, troop support and material drops: for an influence price of course.

Despite all these great new additions, the biggest flaw here is repetition. Whether it be a VIP, civilian or soldier rescue mission, each task essentially boils down to go to location, save survivor from zombie mob, talk to survivor, bring survivor home. Every now and again you'll have to cover them while they collect their gear, but it's all essentially just a series of fetch and escort quests one after the other.

Another criticism is that, like its parent game, the DLC is a buggy experience, with occasional frame rate drops and physics issues rearing their heads. It's rare enough, but when a game enforces perma-death having your vehicle unexpectedly launch itself into the air is a brown-trouser moment that you could have done without.

Despite this, Lifeline consistently entertains through it's modest runtime. Fans of State of Decay will no doubt enjoy their experience here, and the game suits the more action-orientated and time-sensitive gameplay. Multiple endings give the game an element of replayability, but given the repetitive nature of gameplay, you may want to take a break between playthroughs.