I was going to buy this sight-unseen, solely based on the positive impressions in here. At the last minute I decided to watch the videos in the OT and lost all interest. There seems to be very little tension.
The tension is not so obvious in the demo. The game has permadeath, so you better have made friends with survivors, because if your protagonist dies, you can then switch out to them. You can't overwork one dude, or he gets tired, and if you don't have coffee, you have to set him back at the house to rest.
This is one of the most tense games I've played thanks to the "always on" (State of Decay 2, Xbox One exclusive!
) world. So if you turn off the game when you still have zombie infestations or hordes, then bad stuff is going to happen to the world when you boot the game back up.
Your weapon turns to yellow, meaning it's damaged, but hey whatever still takes the same amount of hits to down a zombie. Whacking away, and WHAT IT BROKE?! Oh fuck, why did I put only 1 melee weapon in my inventory?! Now I can only kick people and waste the little ammo I have for my gun! I'M OUTTA HERE!
Zombie hordes in the streets are not to be fucked with on foot. If you're not near a car, then you're going to be running like hell, losing all stamina, desperately flicking through items that might increase it back to get just about near the car, furiously smashing the Y button.
Many more tense moments that are brought out because of the random world.