State of Decay 2 patch fixes some of the worst bugs

Ah, there’s nothing like throwing a pipe bomb at a group of zombies, and having that pipe bomb freeze in mid-air right in front of your face and explode. State of Decay 2 wasn’t good at many things, but it was good at being a buggy jankfest. Now, a patch from developers Undead Labs includes fixes for the accidental facebomb, along with some more of the worst bugs, like disappearing health bars and doors that won’t stay open. The patch is 20 GB large, perhaps a testament to just how much of the zombie survival game was left unpolished when it released (for Windows 10 only) last month.

Here are the patch notes but let’s look at some of the worst offenders that have now been squashed:

• Grenades no longer get stuck and explode in front of client character’s face or behind their head while throwing
• Characters no longer “self-shadow” when using a flashlight in multiplayer
• Fixed issue with doors appearing the opposite of the state they are in
• Resolved situation where, when getting into vehicles, the camera could become detached from the player’s character
• Elimination of white line that appears when driving at night time
• Fixed issue with player HUD disappearing after NPCs are executed by zombies
• Fixed issue where player’s loot sometimes becomes invisible until their entire backpack is deposited into a Supply Locker

“Some of the most noticeable changes in this patch include stability, performance, and multiplayer improvements,” add the developers. This means the impossible physics your cars would sometimes suffer while playing multiplayer will now be fixed too (“including cars flying into the air”).

I’m not sure big fixes and tweaking will make the endless chores of this zombie thrasher any more palatable. The game’s biggest problem, as I wrote in our State of Decay 2 review, wasn't the bugs but that it was more a series of repetitive shopping trips than a story-generating world of survival against the odds. But if you’ve enjoyed mucking about in co-op, these networking fixes might tempt you back for some looting and horn-honking.