I have played about 22 hours of DayZ thus far. I have played as of January 8th. These opinions expressed are my own, I am not employed by any developer at the time this was written.
I have a love-hate relationship with DayZ. I have racked up well over a hundred (probably around 200 if I am honest with myself) in the modification for ARMA II and I have played 22 hours of the Alpha. The first ten minutes of my game time in the standalone were an adventure I did not expect. I was captured, handcuffed in the Elektrozavodsk power station, and beaten to unconsciousness for not talking (I didn't know the voice chat bind at the time, or the text one). When I finally figured out how to talk, I was revived, allowed to walk out (still handcuffed), and invited to watch the guys stream and join their team-speak (they felt bad for beating me up). I was shortly after executed along with my new found "friends" by another roaming group of players. Adventures like this seemed to happen a lot while I relearned DayZ. Do I like the game? Yes. Would I recommend the game to a friend? I don't know.
You see, when I play by myself I find it very easy to get geared up, suited up, and well stocked on provisions. I find myself running about, hunting players, and avoiding detection by the aforementioned players and zombies alike. I am a good shot, and I do not die very often.
When I play with friends, things get a bit more hectic once we meet up. If we meet up. When I play with friends, DayZ is, for the first hour or two that I join up with some friends, no longer a zombie survival simulator. It is a cross country simulator. I run, I run, I run some more, and still I cannot find my friends for about 40 minutes. This is either because they are fresh spawns at the coast and I am at the North West or North East airfield, or I am a fresh spawn in the North East and they are down in Balota sniping people because they are psychotic assholes. Why don't I find a vehicle and repair it? Well, there aren't vehicles in the game yet, which is unfortunate.
Still, I love the game. I love the constant, unending paranoia that accompanies you once you get geared up, even though it is still really easy to find weapons, ammunition, and gear. I love the thrill of the hunt, the fear when a new sound is heard, the constant checking in with your buddy(ies), saying "Was that you??" over and over again. I love the adventure of it, but sometimes the running gets old.
There are a lot of jerks who play, who will simply kill you on sight. Sometimes a stupid thing, like a marauding zombie, will catch you by surprise and kill you, scare the crap out of you, or both. To my friends, I find it very hard to recommend the game. They watch streams and say "It looks like a lot of running around," which it is. That isn't the fun of the game, unless you really, really like running but cannot bring yourself to go outside or on a treadmill. The fun is ensuring your survival, attempting to hunt the bigger game that exists, and/or teaming up with completely random strangers who may betray you as soon as they pick up a gun and some ammunition. Or an ax. That has happened too.
Again, I feel that is unfair at this time to issue a "review" of the game. Why? Because it is still in alpha. There are things that annoy me (RANDOM ZOMBIE NOISES OR COKE CANS BEING OPENED IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE ARE NOT OK. NOT. OK.) and things that will hopefully be fixed. The mod was buggy as hell, I think the alpha is better off. So here's my recommendation. I would recommend the game to anyone who enjoyed the mod. I'd recommend it to anyone who has a solid set of friends that enjoys playing multiplayer games together. I'd recommend the game to anyone who fancies being a psychopath but would prefer not to actually kill people. Seriously, don't actually kill people. Thanks for reading, and check out the game! It's on steam.
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