State of Decay 2: Network Expedition

[Part of the Diary of Zombies]

Quincy and Helena arrive in Trumbull Valley in search of Ray Santos, an old friend of their boss. The first person they find is Malik though, and for the little task of clearing out his old base he is happy to provide information and so they do this, taking his small yet spacious car to Jurassic Junction - the biggest base ever! Quincy uses his stealth skills to farm up some plague samples and supplies afterwards before he and Helena head off to the coordinates Malik provides - finding Ray and his mechanic gang to be having easily solved radio problems.

Sometimes cars just fly off on their own. Best fix if you are at base is to quit and load.

One of Ray's associates, Keesha, also reveals they are having "rent" problems with Mickey - a scum bandit thug in the area who is easily scared off. Keesha decides to join their proactive group thanks to this and helps establish outposts in town while at the same time avoiding plague hearts as for a change, that doesn't seem to be the main goal here... instead that is spelled out when Keesha and Malik meet Captain Logan, the last soldier in the valley, and his ally Dr. Hoffman. They explain the military had come in and were wiped out trying destroy a new type of growth: a plague wall!

He demonstrates the resilience of one such plague wall at a downed aircraft. Only with Dr. Hoffman's newly invented "plague buster" grenades crafted from plague bloaters can the hard outer shell be exposed (temporarily) to damage the bulbous growth within. Like plague hearts, the walls also summon zombies to defend it but with the supply of "plague busters" the Captain brings, they aren't a problem (lethal to them too) as the plane wall is destroyed.

Logan then explains the town of Marshall is surounded by plague walls, and believe that whatever lies in the center is the key to undoing the blood plague. After collecting equipment to let them produce their own plague busters, the Network Expedition crew is tasked with the onerous task of harvesting plague bloaters.

Insight: Heartland has no customizable difficulty setting. All zeds have blood plague and you have a limited pool of fixed survivors, however all these survivors are pretty strong and the combat difficulty itself is below dread since you can ram your car into many enemies AND there are many cars available.