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Heavily modified
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A heavily armed player, staying alive.
DayZ is something of an interesting specimen. It's idea is simple enough, it's the sort of game you and your friends come up with late at night around the third or fourth drink. It's a completely open world zombie survival game with a focus on organic player->player interaction. It's not a new idea, yet for some reason it's an idea that was, until recently, underused.
Then came Dean "Rocket" Hall, an ex-military New Zealand game designer an credible genius. Working almost completely by himself, and loosly based on Hall's experience with military training sims (like ARMA 2) he cobbled together the first draft of Day Z. Word spread quickly, and it soon became a massive hit, propelling the previously niche market title of Arma2 to the top of Steam sales charts, even during a holiday sale. It became so popular that boxed copies of ARMA 2 advertised the mod as part of the packaging and came with instructions on how to install DayZ. A standalone version was inevitable.
That brings me to today's topic, the standalone game. As of this writing it's in Alpha version 0.52, meaning that, as far as the developers are concerned, it's only halfway to a Beta stage, and the full foundation release is a long way off. Is it any good? Does it show promise? Is it worth the price of admission?
Night of the Living Living
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Hostage situations and highway robbery are all possible, and completely player controlled.
These questions are somewhat difficult to answer. On the one hand, it's a fairly competant game, even in the early stages. The best parts of the Mod version are still here, and often they're improved as well. But there's issues with the game and it's constantly apparent how early in development this project truly is.
Certainly the absolute best part of the DayZ experience is still alive and well, that being the player to player interaction and moment to moment experiences. Below is the reason I'm writing this article:
Oh! Original video content! Like I'm a real publication!
The Cliffsnotes version is this: While wandering the country side I was approached by some very heavily armed individuals who shot me. Shortly after respawning I ran into them again, at which point they all but kidnapped me and made me work at their bizarre labour farm. Things went weird, and I died again, at which point they began to hunt me, as well as other players.
None of this was scripted, it would be impossible to script something this weird. These were real people, controlling their characters and role-playing in this world. This is what other games aspire to be.
That's just the best example I have, plus the one that I recorded video for. There was also the time I stumbled into a forest fight club and beat a man to death over some berries. The handful of times where I've forged ad-hoc allegiances with people to survive. The time I found a gun and declared myself king of a small fishing village to no-one in particular.
These are DayZ at their best, and beyond that this is online gaming at it's best. Real, organic, unreproducable experiences that create memories. DayZ is a watercooler game, in that you'll play it all weekend and talk about it Monday at the watercooler. It's a game that's worth playing just for the stories you can tell.
Stinking corpse
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A quiet moment of reflection in the wasteland.
You'll need stories to tell because lord knows the gameplay isn't anything worth writing about. Much to my disappointment I was informed that the standalone version of DayZ was still running off the ARMA 2 engine. This is one of the worst things about the game.
I love the ARMA games. They transcend ordinary shooters by being a military simulation. They're ultra realistic and extremely unintuitive at times. The first ARMA game was an interesting idea, and the third entry is a very well designed and user-friendly game. But ARMA 2 was, at best, problematic. It's animations were jagged, and it often felt as though your character was only tangentially connected to the terrain. Clipping issues abounded and the very concept of movement wasn't always correct. It's a strange and difficult game to play, especially when compared to it's contemporaries.
That's why I was dismayed to learn that DayZ was still built using this engine. ARMA 2 was unstable at the best of times, but here, trying to do so many things the engine wasn't meant to do, seems to be stressing it out. DayZ works, sure, but it's clear that the idea of the game is way to big for the engine to handle it. In a Reddit Q&A session Hall stated that DayZ would be moving to a new engine, and I'm awaiting that change with baited breath.
DayZ is a game that shows promise, and the best parts of it are already in place. It's going to need time, and it may seem like it's to ambitious for it's own good. It's hard to say how it is compared to the mod version, and even more difficult to recommend spending money on it. There's a great concept, and an even better game here, they just have layers of grime on top of them.
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