Five years later andDayZ, having
gone through an extended Early
Access period, is finally out. And,
well, nothing much has changed.
There’s something comforting about
the fact that DayZ is still DayZ, with
its clunky controls,
buggy zombies and
commitment to making
surviving as hard as
possible. It’s kinda
absurd that, in a 1.0
release, there are still
problems that have
been stubbornly
lingering since the
alpha days. But honestly, I wasn’t
expecting much else. For better or
worse, it’s the game I remember.
You still have to run for miles to
meet up with friends. Zombies still
get stuck in walls or just fail to notice
you at all. You can scour an entire
town for supplies, only to find one
dirty jacket, a tin opener and no tins.
And the chances that you’ll be killed
by an unseen sniper, usually seconds
after you finally find something good,
is always high. At least the ladders
have been sorted. Veteran players will
remember the agony of climbing a
ladder and ending up inexplicably
dead at the bottom of it.
If this all sounds a bit miserable, it
is. Minute to minute, this is about asgruelling as survival games get. You
have an ever-dwindling parade of
meters to manage – thirst, hunger,
temperature and so on – and the
general scarcity of items can make
staying alive an ordeal. There’s
nothing more
disheartening than
trekking for miles to a
town, only to see all the
doors lying open: a
surefire sign that
someone has already
looted the place.
But this does
complement the
hopeless, melancholy atmosphere of
the game. The Soviet map,
Chernarus, is dripping in misery. You
get the feeling that even before the
zombies arrived, this would’ve been
an unpleasant place to get lost in. But
there’s a quiet beauty to be found out
there, too, particularly in the rolling
farmland, dense forests and sleepy
rural towns. It’s a fantastic setting,
and a welcome change from the more
familiar Western post-apocalypses
that usually feature in these games.
The largest concentration of
players tends to be around cities and
military bases – where the best loot is
often found – meaning you can travel
in the wilds pretty much undisturbed.
When I play DayZ, I’m constantly onthe move, travelling between towns,
landmarks and other points of
interest, grabbing whatever I can
find, avoiding trouble if I can. But
that means alotof uneventful
running. There are vehicles, but
they’re often missing parts or fuel,
and locating them can be a real chore
for a solo player.CHANGING GEAR
The sandbox nature of the game
means that getting ‘geared up’ will be
most players’ main goal: finding a
gun, ammo, bandages, food, drink
and maybe a nice helmet or
something. But the more you hoard,
the more nerve-racking the game
becomes, because you know that
you’re just one trigger-happy survivor
or troll away from losing it all. I
actually love this, because it makes
death mean something. When you
die you’re unceremoniously dumped
back to a random starting location
with no gear, and knowing this makes
every decision, especially with other
players around, loaded with danger.
The real thrill ofDayZ, and the
reason I’ve played both the mod and
the standalone version for hundreds
of hours each, is in the feeling you get
when you inevitably bump into
another survivor. Even now my heart
pounds when I’m exploring a town
or wandering in the wilderness and I
see another player ahead. Sometimes,
but not that often these days, they
might wave you down for a chat and
some beans. Or they might warn you
about a group of bandits (DayZslang
for player killers) in the next town.
But they’ll probably just shoot you
on sight. There are a lot of reasons
for this. They might just enjoy
killingpeople. They might want your
loot. Or, and this happened to me, the
game has turned them into a horrible
person. See, I used to be friendly. I’d
approach people, wave, say hello. I’d
give them advice or ask if they
needed a hand. But after several
instances of people pretending to be
friendly then stabbing me in the back
(literally), or luring me into anNEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
Ahardcoresurvival
game, with zombies.
EXPECT TO PAY
£34
DEVELOPER
Bohemia Interactive
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
Core i5-6600K, GTX
1080,16GBRAM
MULTIPLAYER
1-64 players
LINK
http://www.dayz.comYo u h a ve a n
ever-dwindling
parade of
meters to
manageD
ecember, 2013. Barack Obama is in the White House.
Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus is topping the charts. The
Harlem Shake is taking the internet by storm. And DayZ, a
zombie-themed survival game, hits Steam Early Access.
Part-survival sandbox, part-social experiment, the game
throws 64 players into a bleak zombie apocalypse, sits back and lets them
make their own fun.DEAD END
DAYZ is a zombie survival game that’s boring, clunky, and some of the most exciting
multiplayer on PC. By Andy Kelly
TIMELINE A brief history of DayZ
JANUARY 21,
2012
Dean Hall
releases his
Arma 2 mod,
DayZ.APRIL 18,
2012
DayZenters
alpha phase, and
takes the world
by storm.MAY 15, 2012
Hall tells PC
Gamer that a
standalone
version of DayZ is
in the works.AUGUST 7,
2012
Bohemia
announces the
standalone
game.DECEMBER
16, 2013
DayZ hits Early
Access on Steam
and will stay
there for a while.DECEMBER
13, 2018
DayZ reaches
version 1.0 and
leaves Early
Access.DayZ
REVIEW