DayZ Review

It's impossible to play Day Z and not be reminded of The Walking Dead. In the now famous mod for Arma 2, you play as a solitary survivor, spawned in a 225 km squared map, where the only goal is to survive. And its hard. Dead Souls hard.

With single hits, zombies will take you down just like in The Walking Dead. None of these Dead Rising shenanigans or Lead 4 Dead style last stands; its you, your weapon and your wits against the numberless hordes. Day Z is more of an experience or piece of art than an actual game, because it is still in an EXTREMELY early beta. As you traverse the wild open plains you are struck with the same emptiness that inspired the poets of Romanticism, yet the peace is broken in a heart-beat with the growls and screams of zombies. It's great. Old-school, hard-core gaming goodness. No unloading your Uzi into a horde and tearing them apart, no chainsaw halving the undead population of Chernarus, no molotovs leaving you toasty with the burning flesh of a thousand zombies. 

I find it great how so much realism has been injected into the game, from the meters telling you how visible and audible you are to the undead to the way you have to bandage yourself up to prevent a bleed out. Day Z is almost a simulator of what would happen if a zombie outbreak occurred in real life. Its a chilling thought. It also feels like someone dropped a mountain on your shoulders when a fellow player kills you for your loot, but then again in real life that stuff happens. Just look at Shane in The Walking Dead...

This game is buggy to be honest, and the lack of a real goal (reach the survivor camp, get across to the coast yada yada) makes it hard to play again after being shot in the back by some sneaky so and so, but as a once or team-played game it works brilliantly.

7/10 for the current buggy version (When you die you'll feel the pain)