Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Immersive"

Good morning. You have just woken up on the beach of Chernarus, the fictional version of Modern Day Russia. You are not alone here. There could be up to 100 (and counting) other actual people in this strange land. You have a look about and realize, it's the **** zombie apocalypse.

Except there's something marvelous about this zombie apocalypse. There's no objective or waypoint, telling you where to go. There is no pre-determined path you must take shrouded by debris and invisible walls. There is none of that. You are armed with only your manhood and your beans. You must treasure your beans, for they may save your life. Being that there is no objective in the game (mod), you will probably make your own general goals. A very basic and common goal shared amongst players is to survive. This doesn't mean laying in a bush far away from everything all day. You need to find food, water, guns, ammunition, etc.

If you want to live. You're going to need more beans. As you travel through small villages you may stumble upon some of the games larger cities such as Cherno, Elektro, Berezino, Vybor, or one of the many military encampments. These types of places offer just what you need to survive. But if the surrounding zombies weren't enough to sneak around/carve your way through; there are up to 100 other paranoid players that could potentially be around the corner or up in the surrounding hills. This game will often question your own morality. If you die, you lost everything. There are no skills, but you lose all of your gear you respawn on the coast. That's why seeing other players is so tense. Could they be a worthy ally/friend? Or are they just looking to advance their loot by putting a quick bullet in your head rather than spend the time palling around with you. You don't know, and you may just end up being part of the vicious cycle of banditry.

If you're a hardcore player you can find a tent and set up a camp in the woods. There are also vehicles which are extremely rare in the game which must be repaired or stolen from other players to drive.

DayZ is still in alpha, which is why this review is more of a summary of the experience rather than a critique. However I will jump into a bit of a review.

Sound: The game has it's own soundtrack which is quite nice. The music is tense and may frighten you when you first play. For a mod, it's has a rather high production quality. Although after playing the game for a while, there could be more tracks. You can always turn the in-game music off.

Visuals: DayZ is obviously a mod for ArmA II. A highly-acclaimed military simulator. The graphics are quite nice but 3d models and textures can get quite repetitive. As you realize that all towns share at least one of the same building models.

Gameplay: I feel the PVP aspect of the game is brilliant. As long as the server ping is relativley low, hit detection seems alright. But I hear a lot of people complaining about it on the DayZ forums. The PVZ (zombies) is fun for a while, but the "herky-jerky" movement of the zombies seems more buggy than it does authentic. All zombies are ridiculously fast at the time of writing this. They will match you in speed but are slow in doors. You can lost them around corners and through buildings. I believe the way forward with this mod is to have different zombie types. For instance it would be nice to see some George Romero style zombies that are slow, but spawn in numbers and walk with their arms out front.

There could be some larger tank zombies.

And even some Bear Grylls zombies that find solace in the wilderness and roam the forests as currently, there is no danger from zombies in the forests.

All in all, this mod is worth playing. It is the first piece of viral interactive media to tap the zombie survival market, and it has kicked the market off with a bang.

I'm sure with the amount of attention DayZ has gathered we will be seeing games like it from multiple developers in the future.