This review contains some mild State of Decay 2 spoilers. I’m not always the fastest player. I like to take my time and explore, and if there are side quests, I will stay distracted forever, following tiny threads and traveling the countryside. I love scrounging things, too, picking flowers, finding […]
zombies
28 posts
Last week, a friend mentioned the recently released film The Girl With All the Gifts, and its associated book. I’d never heard of either, but it’s no surprise to anyone around here that I’m a huge zombie nerd, so the trailer immediately caught my attention, because it’s a human story […]
Episode 122: “We Got You A Pony!”: A Conversation with Lauren Stone and Travis Stout (Right click and save as to download, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn). In this episode we return to Trumbull Valley for more discussions with folks from behind the scenes on State of Decay, the game that […]
Last week, I read an article by Mike Mariani called “The Tragic, Forgotten History of Zombies,” and it got me thinking about the folkloric and mythological trajectory of the undead. Indeed, what strikes me about Mariani’s article is his argument that our current pop culture iterations of the zombie whitewash […]
Not long ago, I started playing State of Decay again. I know, I know, but at this point, it’s become a comfort object for me, something to help me relax during a busy week. I started a new Breakdown game and fiddled a little with Lifeline again, and looking at […]
Be warned: spoilers for all seasons of The Walking Dead, the episodes of Fear the Walking Dead, and the comics through current continuity follow. Two weeks into the new spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead, a familiar refrain can be heard: the show is killing off all its Black male characters, a complaint […]
Episode 104: Because the Apocalypse Is About People, or An Interview with Undead Labs (Right click and save as to download, or hit us up on iTunes or Stitcher). It’s not any kind of secret that we like State of Decay — we’ve written extensively on Undead Labs’ title since its […]
It’s been 25 days since I gained early access to State of Decay Year One Survival Edition. We don’t get a ton of review codes around here; as a smaller site with a focus a little to the left of traditional gaming sites, we’re not exactly a standard destination for reviews, […]
Last week I wrote about diversity in State of Decay, but I focused on only a very concrete, measurable aspect of diversity, raw numbers, when I broke down the ratios of white characters versus PoC in Undead Labs’ game. As I said in that piece, though, the numbers don’t tell the […]
This is the first in a series of Critical Let’s Plays on State of Decay Year One Survival Edition we’ll be featuring here at NYMG, exploring Lifeline, the main story mode, and Breakdown (though we may not do the full stories for all modes). There’s a lot to unpack in […]
This is a little different from our standard Power Hour Reviews not only in that I’m revisiting a game we’ve already looked at extensively (in an earlier version), including reviews, but in that I’m exploring the basics and changes in all three modes. It’s an extra-double-bonus look at the update of […]
Last week, I shared some analysis of gender signifiers in character models from State of Decay, a game that seems to do a good job of presenting practically dressed and designed characters, while also featuring some diversity in body types and more. A commenter pointed out, however, that including some […]
The new DLC for Undead Labs’ State of Decay is more than an add-on: Lifeline is, in some ways, a whole new game. Lifeline brings a new map, new strategies, new characters, new story, and nearly a whole new feel to the table, and while part of the new frills […]
With the third installment of the second season of Telltale Games’ take on the powerhouse Walking Dead franchise, the game seems to have finally hit its whole stride. This isn’t to say I didn’t love the first season, or the previous episodes in the follow-up, but the latest in the […]
In the first part of this study of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, I questioned whether the Bechdel Test was the best benchmark for judging whether or not a piece of media had something to offer in terms of good female characterization. Is the Bechdel Test enough, or does even […]
Recently there’s been a lot of discussion in the media about the top films of 2013 and the Bechdel test. Movies with real, rounded female characters are doing well, by the numbers, and with award season picking up, we’ll likely see more of these reports. Unfortunately, anyone who studies the […]