Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Immersive"

Good:
-Finally, an open world survival horror game! Yes, there is a market for this!
-Zombie animations and sounds are for the most part pretty terrifying.
-The game is patched often.
-Suspense stems from persistent deaths. If you die, you lose everything and must start over. Player location is also persistent between servers.
-One shot kills from other players will definitely keep you on your toes and make you rethink running carelessly through the open.
-Wide range of guns and equipment that is found in certain locations with a frequency that was well designed.
-The base game (Arma 2) provides an enormous, realistic, and visually appeasing Russian backdrop in which DayZ is set. You'll find houses, hospitals, warehouses, supermarkets, military bases, and airports in addition to a swath of open wilderness to explore. The draw distance is spot on as well.
-Repairing cars and helicopters is a nice touch.
-Total darkness at night is brilliant, even with the game's gamma turned all the way up it looks somewhat similar to how your eyes would perceive things after adjusting to the dark. NV goggles make nighttime play even more interesting.
-Surviving out in the wilderness is entirely viable with the right equipment.

Bad:
-Extremely cumbersome setup and patching process.
-The majority of buildings are unenterable (the only downside to Arma's map).
-Zombies tend to zigzag far too often and are difficult to shoot as a result.
-Not much incentive to befriend strangers, might be better if shooting them was more of a dilemma.
-Stealth mechanics are often harsh and buggy, I've been crawling as slowly as possible through a dense field only to have a zombie run at me from 200+ meters away.

I hope that this mod serves as an inspiration for more developers to capitalize on such a fantastic genre. Indeed, they've already begun - check out War Z.