lot of people will bounce off it. It’s a
game where you have to work hard
to achieve anything, and even then it
can be immediately snatched away
from you if you make
one stupid mistake, or
a player decides they
want to shoot you.HIT AND MISS
Occasionally, DayZ is
one of the best
multiplayer games on
PC. But a lot of the
time it’s a slow, dull, frustrating, and
meandering mess of bugs, broken
zombie AI and weightless combat. So
I don’t know what to think, really.
Some of the stories this game has
created will stick with me forever,
and that’s something to be celebrated.
But it’s also unforgiving, messy and
doesn’t have much respect for your
time. If you want a social survival
experience that doesn’t pull any
punches, set in an evocative and
atmospheric world, then DayZ might
be worth looking at. But if you’re
after a polished game that always
does what it’s supposed to, you’re in
for a disappointment.69
DayZ has the power to
create incredible stories,
but the weightless
combat and buggy
zombies let it down.VERDICTFighting a
zombie
feels like
swatting
at a hologramOLD WORLD BLUESPlaces to visit in Chernarus
INTERNATIONAL HOTEL
Ahalf-destroyedhotellocatedinthecityof
Chernogorsk, with the charred remains of a
plane nearby. The infection must’ve spread
to its passengers while it was in the air.CARGO SHIP
On the northeastern shoreline of Chernarus,
you’ll find this wrecked ship. And an opening
inthehullletsyouaccessitsinteriorandthe
valuable loot within.GREEN MOUNTAIN
Northeast of the village of Zelenogorsk,
Green Mountain can be seen for miles
around. On it you’ll find a massive radio
tower and a military base filled with loot.ELEKTROZAVODSK
This city is one of the most populated areas
in Chernarus, popular with survivors for its
abundance of loot, ambush spots and hiding
places. Newcomers should stay away.DayZ
REVIEW
ambush, I’ve become wary of other
survivors to the point of paranoia.
That’s brilliant, though. It’s what
makes DayZ such a fascinating
multiplayer game, and far more
interesting to me than something like
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. In
games like that, your only interaction
with people is, ultimately, shooting
them. But in DayZ, every encounter
with another player is an opportunity
for a story. Even if you get robbed or
handcuffed or humiliated, it’ll be
something you remember.
Incidentally, make sure you play with
a mic. Not responding vocally when
someone says hello, or orders you to
do something at gunpoint, will likely
just get you killed.
I haven’t really talked about the
zombies yet, because they’re the least
exciting thing in the game. Which is,
perhaps, a little odd in a game about
a zombie apocalypse. When they
aren’t stuck in the scenery they run
dumbly at you, and sometimes they
phase in and out of existence like
your internet connection can’t keep
up with them. Then when it comes
to actually shooting or smacking one
with a melee weapon, there’s no
sense of physicality at all.
Fighting a zombie feels like
swatting at a hologram. The combat
really is abysmal, and there’s no sense
of challenge or satisfaction attached
to it. They’re better than they were in
the early days of the standalone, but
only just. The result of this is that,
rather than something to be feared,
the undead are just annoying. There
was a point in the mod when the
zombies didn’t work at all, and I
enjoyed that more because there was
nothing getting in the way of the real
heart of the game: the interactions
between players.
BORED STIFF
DayZ is a difficult game to review,
because a lot of the time it’s pretty
boring. There are long stretches of
nothing; of rambling across
seemingly endless fields, not finding
anything in towns, never
encountering another soul. But what
keeps you going is knowing that,
around the next corner,
something incredibly exciting
might happen. A firefight
with a rival group of
survivors in a ruined city. A
knife-edge standoff with a
gun-toting rival. Someone who
hasn’t seen you, meaning you might
be able to sneak up, stick an axe in
their back, and steal that nice jacket
they’re wearing.
These snatches of drama are
fleeting, but in the right moment
there are few games as
exciting as DayZ. And,
similar to EVE Online,
knowing that
everything (except the
zombies) is player-
driven makes it feel
extra special. If you get
tricked and robbed by a
group of bandits, it
wasn’t some event scripted by a
developer: it was dreamed up by a
real, thinking human, and that really
adds to the experience. In one
combat encounter – my backpack
stuffed with hard-earned supplies,
my friend lying bleeding in the
corner, two assailants hidden in the
distance – the exhilaration was
incredible. These were intelligent
humans that I was facing, not AI
drones I could easily outsmart.
But then it was back to running
around the fields, scavenging for
supplies, failing to find any, then
dying and restarting – again and
again. DayZ comes into its own
when you get a foothold,
managing to locate enough
supplies and weapons to
defend yourself and stay alive.
But getting to that point is
absolutely gruelling
sometimes, and that’s where a