Junk Hunter Yoshida's top recommendation! If you're an Xbox One user, you should play "State of Decay" series! The Xbox way! Part 2]

Because Akiba Research Institute is crazy (super compliment!) As soon as they allowed us to start our Xbox series last month, we received a variety of responses from people in the gaming industry, most of which were concerned that we were fighting a losing battle. (laugh).

(Chuckles) I told them that I do not think we have lost yet. The Xbox is at the bottom of the market in Japan, and there is no way it can go any lower.

In other words, the only options are to stay on a parallel line or to go up. There is nothing to be afraid of.

And so it should be. Will Microsoft announce the next Xbox at the recent The Game Awards 2019? Rumors were flying around that it was, and it's finally become a reality!　The project is called ...... "Xbox Series X". The name is so lame that it might make you cringe, but that's okay. Xbox users know that I don't have a good sense of naming things. At any rate, the shape is amazing. It looks like an ashtray placed at the entrance of a non-smoking ramen shop!

Doesn't it make you feel a little sad?　The tower-shaped rectangle completely destroys the existing console look, and some people have defaulted to the Xbox being a pedestal with something on top of it when placed horizontally, except for the first generation Xboxes. I don't know if this was done to dispel such voices, but it is indeed impossible to do so with this tower shape.

However, the stance of not damaging the image of "BOX = box" is too rugged and wonderful. The details have not been fully announced yet, but it is said to be capable of processing four times as much as the "Xbox One X." Also, all the assets of the "Xbox One" will be taken over. And all the assets of "Xbox One" will be inherited, so it is definitely a great factor for users to have a wide range of coverage from the original Xbox to the current models. The release is said to be next year's holiday season, and I am guessing that it will be in November before the release of Sony's "PS5" (probably in December). I am guessing that it will be released in November before Sony's PS5 (probably in December).

So, when I went to ...... to show my love for Xbox again, I realized something terrible. My Xbox LIVE Gold membership has expired. You may be thinking, "Well, as long as I pay for it, there's no problem," but my North American, Canadian, and Japanese accounts all expired at about the same time, and my overseas account does not support payment by Japanese credit card (although I heard that some credit card companies do). Recently, there have been an increasing number of cases where Visa prepaid cards sold in Japan are no longer accepted as payment for overseas purchases, etc., and we are currently in the process of loading them.

Well, I will do something about it in the near future. My main private account is in North America, so I'm going to give priority to that account.

However, as a means of listening to the frustrated voices of the minority, I would like to respond to the request for "recommended game software that can be played on the Xbox One". In response to their request, I'd like to introduce a title that Yoshida highly recommends.

Naturally, it is an exclusive title that is ONLY ON Xbox (although there have been countless titles that have betrayed us in the past, such as "Dead Rising"), but we picked up the zombie game series "State of Decay," which has not been released in Japan yet!

This title is a must-play if you're an Xbox One user. This title is a must-play for Xbox One users, unless you don't like zombie games. State of Decay" means "state of collapse" in Japanese and refers to a zombie apocalypse, but there are a fair number of survivors, so the game is not designed to make you feel lonely and alone amongst all the zombies.

In fact, this title was originally released as a download-only title for the Xbox 360, but it has been re-released for the Xbox One in a version with enhanced graphics and processing power. The title is State of Decay 2 ULTIMATE EDITION. As you can guess from the title, this is a sequel. But, since the previous game is included as a bonus for the Xbox One, purchasing this one is definitely a better deal. The game also includes a lot of downloadable content, not all of it, but a lot of it, and we highly recommend the ultimate version of this game!

If you have purchased "State of Decay 2 Ultimate Edition (SoD2 UE)," you should play the sequel "State of Decay 2 (SoD2)" first. What?　You start with the sequel?" For example, in "SoD" (which might be mistaken for a certain porn maker when written as an abbreviation), there was no concept of gasoline in the car as a means of transportation, and you could drive around endlessly. This allowed us to return to the area we were based in with plenty of time to spare, even if we had to go far away to look for supplies. To briefly explain what I mean, many users began to point out that the unrealistic infinite gasoline specifications made the game less tense, and gasoline became a very important resource in the sequel, "SoD2. Therefore, I personally recommend that you play "SoD" only after you have played through "SoD2" to the point where there is nothing left to do in "SoD2". Well, you are free to choose which one you want to play first.

Oh, by accident. I must explain the essential game content. The game design is third-person perspective, and the development team "Undead Labs" liked Capcom's "Dead Rising" series so much that they packed it with elements they wanted to do themselves and released "SoD" in 2013. The sequel, "SoD2," was released in 2018 and has been improved over the past five years. Both "SoD" and "SoD2" begin with a zombie apocalypse. You have to start the game by finding survivors from such a desperate situation and forming a community with several faces. The main attraction of the game is that you have to search for supplies such as food, weapons, and materials to expand the community, sometimes by car and sometimes on foot to various locations on your own.

What makes this game different from other games is that survival is the top priority, not the existence of a final boss or anything like that. When you run out of food, you have to go looking for it. In order to survive, the player must avoid dangerous zombie-infested areas and procure supplies, or safely destroy the zombie hordes one by one before procuring supplies, and it is fun to survive in this decadent zombie-infested world with the player's own hands. If you run out of bullets for your gun, you can go looking for them, but you can also prepare your own by finding materials and building a unit that can manufacture bullets in the community of your base. In particular, "SoD2" is designed to allow players to enjoy more realistic survival than its predecessor, and contains a great deal of essence taken from the foreign TV drama "The Walking Dead.

Some people may say that "Yoshida's choice is too maniacal for a foreign game," but it is true that all the games in the "SoD" series have been released in Japan. It is true that the "SoD" series is entirely in English, and there is quite a lot of textual information. In fact, Microsoft's Japanese subsidiary had also included it in their plans to release it domestically. ...... However, I heard a rumor that the game did not pass the CERO screening because the scene where the player is killed by zombies was cut in half and the internal organs were grotesque. It makes me really sad that freedom of expression has been taken away from us.

I personally highly recommend "SoD2" to my friends, and I've been giving them tips on how to play it without being asked to do so. First of all, "SoD2 UE" includes an additional downloadable content called "Daybreak" by default, which is a tower defense type content, so please play "Daybreak" thoroughly before starting the main game.

Not only will you improve your skill in defeating zombies, but you will also accumulate special points (up to 9999) that can be used in the main game each time you play. The skills you can develop in this game include not only shooting, but also melee attacks such as knives. The special points earned here can be used after you start the main game to hire strong mercenaries with full skills and to purchase special weapons. Furthermore, if you unlock a strong weapon in Daybreak, you can purchase it in the main game, making it a little (well, a lot) easier to progress in the main game. You can use those special points for shopping and other things, even if you lose some of them. You can accumulate points by playing "Daybreak" as many times as you want, so you can accumulate as many points as you want and use them as much as you want.

The biggest feature of the "SoD" series is that once you die, you don't come back to life. The shock of losing a survivor that you have carefully raised to a higher level is immeasurable. However, if you accumulate special points in "Daybreak" and call up a number of mercenaries in "SoD2," you can create the strongest army. But if you call in too many mercenaries, you will be in full cheat mode, and the main game will become easy, so be sure to use them in moderation. SoD2" is still very popular, especially overseas, because of the fun of survival and the ability to play with up to four players online, even though a year and a half has passed since its release.

I have never met a Japanese user, but the sense of doubt and tension that you feel when you go out to explore with a stranger with a high level of survival experience and wonder if you will be betrayed somewhere, and the fun you have when you are given strong weapons and necessary supplies are similar to the feeling you get when you have to survive in solitude in the real world. I think it's because the fun of getting strong weapons and necessary supplies is similar to a simulation when you have to survive in solitude in the real world. I think this is also the reason why the player population is not decreasing.

During the Halloween season, a new set of clothes with a giant butcher knife, an apron, and a pig mask will be available to make players look like serial killers, and there will be many updates!

You don't need to be able to read English. You can look up English words you don't understand on your smartphone.

(Text by Junk Hunter Yoshida)