Day Z Review

The main concept, for those who haven’t heard of Day Z, is this. You spawn in a random location and need to gather gear in order to survive the constant onslaught of players and zombies trying to kill you. That’s it. However when you die, you lose all of the gear you collected. This means you value your life very much in game and that’s where the fun comes in. Heated negotiations with other players threatening you with a gun is an experience not many other games can boast to have.The best bit about this is that these experiences are organic. The game doesn’t artificially synthesize them, they aren’t missions or anything like that, it just happens by itself.

 

The gameplay in Day Z is admittedly its main selling point

I love this fact about Day Z. These player to player interactions are where the game shines, I could tell so many stories about me and my buddies getting into all kinds of trouble. It’s definitely one of those games  you can talk to friends about and all talk about different experiences you’ve each had.

The game runs of the game Arma 2, a military simulator, and plays like most shooters with some more realistic aspects. This adds to the already fun concept by giving it a really realistic survival experience. You need to eat and drink regularly and also manage the occasional disease. At first I didn’t like these features , but now I can’t imagine the game without them.

Since Day Z is a mod the game isn’t very polished

Some of the animations are very strange and/or annoying. The zombie attack animation being one pet peeve of mine, as it’s way too hard to predict their movements so I can never shoot them in time. These however are minor flaws in an otherwise standout mod.

Day Z has strange graphics. A lot of the time it can look really good, but at others it can look downright ugly. This can most likely be attributed to Arma 2 being made in 2009, but for a game that can look so good to suddenly look really bad is very strange indeed. In order to make the game look really good, you’re going to need a beastly machine to run it on. The game is very CPU intensive more than anything else and without a decent computer you can really see Day Z’s ugly side. There is no music in Day Z unless added by a server specifically. After all Day Z is a mod so we can’t expect a triple A title level of polish.

Day Z has no real story to speak of, and in my opinion that is just fine. After all it is just a mod, but an attempt could be nice in the standalone game of Day Z on the way. Maybe even just an explanation of the how the zombie outbreak occurred. Realistically however, the lack of story takes nothing away from the gameplay and future iterations would not be harmed by a continued lack of story.

The lifespan of Day Z is absolutely massive. With new community made expansions of the mod being made all the time even if you get bored of the standard game there is so many more  iterations to try out. Gearing up and fighting players with friends never gets old. Although the game can be fun alone, I highly recommend getting some friends to play Day Z with you as well,  it will make your experience all the better.

Overall Day Z is a standout mod, and is deserving of all the praise it receives

If you are at all thinking of getting into Day Z, I highly recommend you do as you will not regret it. There are many hours of fun to be had here, and even more with friends. I would argue that Day Z is one of the best mods ever made.

Day Z is available as a modification for Arma 2 and the expansion Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead which can both be purchased through Steam.