Review: DayZ turns frustrating military game into top-notch survival horror | PCWorld

PCWorld: "In this excellent free mod, Arma II becomes the underpinning for zombie apocalypse. Staying alive when surrounded by the undead has never been so painfully realistic."

[vortis]

Ahahaha...they should have waited for the standalone and then did a review. But the mod has come a long ways.

[camel_toad]

Reeeally interested in it but since I don't own Arma II I reckon Im waiting on the standalone.

[Shadonic]

will the stand alone be free to play? also are these specs good enough to even play Day z?

You Have: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T6400 @ 2.00GHz
You Have: 2.0 GHz
You Have: 4.1 GB
You Have: GeForce 9200M GS

[vortis]

Barely good enough to play it. You'll have to turn a lot of features off.

And no, DayZ standalone won't be free to play but it'll have a small entry price like $10 or so. Dean Rocket Hall says they want the entry really low so any and everyone can play.

[haggishurler]

you could play it but you will probably get 10-20 fps on absolute minimum settings. My computer was not much better than yours and I upgraded it, if you want some advice processor is your priority for this game, 2500k/660ti would be perfect for a good framerate at high/very high settings. Unfortunately as many have discovered this game is very poorly optimized or specifically the Arma 2 engine it is running on, perhaps the standalone will sort this as it is a halfway point between Arma 2 and 3 apparently, this does mean that the difference in performance is not that great making a fairly powerful computer a prerequisite for playing it.

In regards to price dean hall is following minecraft's lead and charging a small fee at first release but the game is likely to change significantly in the future and with that will come a price rise, people who buy the game early will save a lot of money compared to its price in the future.

[MeatAbstract]

Not played DayZ for some time. It got frustrating because you'd see a player and BANG dead. There's no talking, no reasoning and no helping. Just BOOM. Not even to take your stuff either.

I like the idea of WarZ, being able to lock down a town, grow crops and set up flood lights. Basically set up your own community. Has or will this be added in DayzZ in the standalone or has it been added in now?

[vortis]

Yeah they're adding town fortification and social structures to DayZ standalone, I don't know about the mod in its current state...haven't kept up with it for a while.

The WarZ could have been all right but man, it's like they stole all the good stuff from DayZ and then pooped all over it. It also plays like an arcade game and I'm not really down with that. The horror-survival feel of DayZ was tense.

[MeatAbstract]

So was WarZ a bit of a let down? I did enjoy the challenge of DayZ and while I got very frustrated at players constantly killing each other, I understand the intention about the players choice to do this and how, through the community, places like Cherno and Elektro were dangerous places.

So WarZ basically crapped all over that sort of stuff?

[vortis]

I don't know if you've seen the gameplay for WarZ but here it is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

I mean, the inventory is better and all but it doesn't feel as dangerous as DayZ, which is my biggest gripe.

But I guess if you wanted a faster, more action packed version of DayZ then yeah you get that in WarZ.

Also, the crops thing is from that other game from Microsoft, I can't remember the name...something like Decay or whatever, but yeah...you can grow crops and stuff. But the video they had of that looked like trash, very buggy and the combat was terribly off. But it was in alpha so maybe it'll get better.

[haggishurler]

join a private hive where there are clans, there is no shortage of people who talk on mics, hackers are non existent and alt-f4ing is monitored and punished in many cases. Then get recruited in to one of these clans and you will have friendly (in terms of they don't shoot you you may meet a bunch of 'friendly' dicks) people to play with and you can make alliances and hunt down other clans.

This is what I did and the game is much more enjoyable. I now play in a server with a mod to make more vehicles spawn but every resource and weapon is rarer there is a feature which means for 30 seconds after shooting or being shot at you can't log out or you will be killed and the admins are on 24/7 making events like axe fights where rare guns are prizes for winners and bus services taking you around the map. They have also taken out all overpowered guns and added new ones in, as well as this they limited backpack slots so teamwork is a lot more important as carrying two weapons is now difficult.

In conclusion it has removed most of the problems i had with Dayz in the first place and made it in to my favorite game in a long time, I can now only imagine what the standalone will bring.

P.S. Warz is not great

[urwifeminder]

Ive only played 3 day z games cause arma 2 got me hooked.

[Cirran]

Iunno if im joining the wrong servers or what not but I haven't seen a soul while playing DayZ...Maybe that means im doing it right tho? lol

[haggishurler]

you can see how many people are on each server, just in case you don't know, try and join a busy one. The thing that is probably causing this is the fact that the map is 225km^2 this means that you are less likely to encounter people especially not all the time. For me this lack of contact is what makes the game interesting it means that unlike in generic shooters you aren't desensitized (just because I used this word doesn't mean i am blaming violence on video games) to the idea of being shot at suddenly when it happens to you in this game you genuinely feel the fear because of how long it takes you to get anything decent and the fact that when you die you have nothing again. For me this is what i love about the game, I feel as though it forces you to invest yourself and take it seriously, for people who haven't played many games like this or arma the itself the idea of some of my most enjoyable moments in gaming being spending 20 mins watching 3 guys with my friend on skype, on a mountain in a tree,watching the town from above while I move to steal their truck, as they raid a supermarket, and get away with all their gear in the boot, may seem a little slow paced however for me the infrequency of encounters makes the game the amazing experience it is.

[Insane087]

played the earlier day z mod but it wasnt stable enough at the time and lost interest... i did like the weird frog zombie thing tho. as for the war z it's pretty good bugs are being worked out and its 50/50 if someones going to murder ur face theres proxy text chat but would prefer if it were voice theres a few vids up on youtube even tho theres a non-disclosure agreement