Day Z : Arma II Mod review

[rmoxon]

Hopefully the stand alone game is a bit more polished than the mod. I bought Arma 2 purely for this but ended up enjoying Arma 2 more than Dayz. It's a great idea, but it's packed full of annoyances such as the fiddly interface. And that's before you even mention the comical animations where all the zombies seem to have shat their pants.

It doesn't help that Arma 2 is such an average looking game yet requires a monster PC to run it with decent detail either.

[Brad]

Few screens of the standalone have emerged. Looking pretty sweet. All buildings can be entered.
Planning on getting back into this next week.

[Rossco]

I'm really addicted again. Had a few tough games recently getting killed by fully kitted out guys quite often. But currently have a game going where I went straight to hospital for supplies and have managed to get my hands on all sorts of bandages, painkillers, epi pens, morphine and blood packs. So hopefully I'll be able to get some more kit and keep this game going for longer.

I had a really weird time the other day though. Was on for hours and could not find any food at all. Had a good amount of kit too but no food so was wandering through this village in the middle of nowhere trying to find some stuff in houses. I was in a garden totally surrounded at one point but they weren't chasing me so I was just waiting it out for them to pass. All of a sudden though I started hearing suppressed gunfire from all around me. The zombies were getting annihilated and I had no idea where from. I was looking around in all directions panicking and typing like crazy into the chatbox that I'm friendly and not to shoot me. By the time the shooting stopped there were about 20 zombies killed all around me. Then all of a sudden a big medical box appeared behind me when I turned round. There was no-one to be seen so I looked inside and found every item in the game! Obviously some hackers messing about and either randomly put it there where I happened to be or done it to be nice to me while passing through as they could easily have taken me out too. I took pretty much everything I could out the box and sped off on a quad bike that appeared behind me too! I lived in the woods for a while hunting and living off the land but then felt guilty this was cheating since I had just taken all this stuff so easily so drove to an airport and started mucking about with this hacker that was spawning vehicles everywhere.

I ended up dying shortly after but I'm glad I did. I got a wee sneak peak of some of the cool stuff in the game which has made me want to work hard to get it more. Still haven't had a chance to fly a helicopter or anything like that though. I worry that I'll find all the parts and manage to rebuild one then crash it straight away killing myself, as you don't get a chance to practice flying.

Seriously enjoying this game though. It's just so different to anything else out there even if it looks dodgy, has crap animations, is bugged to hell and littered with hackers!

[Brad]

I've not played on them but there are Role Play servers now. No instant PKing, though you might well get held up at gunpoint!

[Rossco]

I don't think any other game has given such an emotional reaction as this just has. I am completely dejected after being killed by a bandit.

My pal and I had been playing for a few days now. I headed north straight away and he planned to join up with me a day or so later when he had some good kit. Last night we eventually got close enough on the map to meet up so he started heading over to me but got attacked on the way by too many zombies and got really hurt. In the panic he got lost and overshot the town I was in by some distance but he was bleeding serious, dying of hunger and constantly falling unconscious.

I had to quickly and discreetly evacuate the town without getting a trail of zombies and also find exactly where he was in a short space of time before he died on me. So he started rhyming off landmarks he could see around him so I could work out where he was. There was a bridge, the road, an open field, a large tree in the middle of it on its own, lots of thing were being shouted and suddenly I screamed "I can see the bridge!"

Then we realised to use co-ordinates on the map too but I didn't know exactly where I was as I sprinted outta town in such a hurry I lost my bearings. So I quickly tried to work out where I was constantly looking back at the map for reference. Eventually found him lying in the field almost dead and managed to give him some cooked meat to save him. Ordeal over. Or so we thought.

We hunted some animals nearby for more meat and made a fire in the forest to cook the meat and get our health back up so we could head back into town to loot the hospital for medical supplies as originally planned. On the way back through the field though, I spotted a lone zombie walking across our path way ahead. I bet my friend I could headshot the zombie from where we stood with my shotgun and he agreed to give me a can of beans if I managed. One beautiful headshot later the zombie was dead and we both laughed. "Uh oh..." I said though, "There's zombies coming!" Obviously some zombies we could see over the hill heard the shot and came running when I downed one of their own. I was raging at myself for that happening for no reason at all. They were all over me instantly and broke my legs without even being able to fire a shot off. I somehow dispatched of all the zombies around me and my pal circled around trying to get any stragglers away.

He legged it into town and managed to get to the hospital for supplies. We met back up after much confusion as to where we both were and he healed me with some morphine and a blood transfusion. In the attack though he lost a lot of blood too though but only had one blood bag which was used on myself so we had to go hunting again to quickly fix him up. Some long feast of sheep, boar, goat and cow later we were back to where we started and I promised not to go headshotting any zombies again unless necessary!

We started crawling to a barn on the outskirts of town on our way back to the hospital but got split up. My pal decided to just head straight to the hospital while I looted the barn. I found a crossbow which I was hoping for so spent some time there sorting out my gear so I could carry it as well as my shotgun. Once I was all sorted I moved onto the next barn. Within seconds of getting in though I got shot several times. I was now gushing of blood and had no idea where this attacker was. I looked around in all directions and hugged the inside wall of the barn and again I got shot. I quickly run to the corner and bandage myself up, munch on some cooked meat at the same time for a wee health boost and get prepared to leg it. I turn around and see the attacker is right behind me looting my bag I can only presume. I quickly run away, lie down and shoot him with every bullet in the magazine of my M1911 but he doesn't die. He walks up to me as I fumble trying to reload in a panic and puts one more shot into me killing me instantly.

Seconds later, my pal who is still in the hospital at this point and listening in horror as I scream about getting killed, dies too. He wasn't sure who killed him or what happened. Just someone behind him all of a sudden then instantly dead. Both of us were absolutely gutted. Yeah, we only had the characters going for a few days but it was by far our longest and best games yet so it feels crap to have it taken away like that by some bandit scum.

I will never understand the outlook people have to do that. How can you get joy by ruining other peoples fun? I just don't get it. We had been going about our business in that area for so long not harming or seeing anyone then we are both taken out so quickly and and out of the blue with neither of us firing first.

Back to the coast I guess...

[Rossco]

Come onnn, someone talk to me about this game! Am I all alone in playing it on here?

I am loving it. Been killed by a hacker and a bandit today both times I had extreme amounts of gear on me. Made me raging at the time but I quickly respawned and got back into it straight away. Such an addictive experience. Every second is previous, you really can't be too careful when playing this.

[Sketcz]

This sounds precisely like my kind of game... Waiting for the standalone though. Don't feel like buying one game, and then trying to mod/patch it into another. I had enough of that crap back in the Half Life days.

[smouty]

There are a number of manager GUIs.
I use DayZ commander http://www.dayz.co/dayz-commander-0-...dayz-launcher/

[Sketcz]

What specs does this need? My main PC runs the original STALKER alright-ish. But I can borrow another PC which ran Metro 2033 quite smoothly. Which side of the power is this leaning towards? If it's more than Metro 2033 then I'll need a hardware upgrade.

[smouty]

My PC is hardly the latest/greatest - C2Q 2.4Ghz, 8Gb, ATI 6670 - and it plays OK. It will struggle at the highest resolutions but at 1280 and high settings it's fine. The GPU was ?40 in PC World so I'm quite impresed

[nakamura]

Rossco, you talk about that bandit ruining your fun but it sounds to me like part of an epic moment in gaming. One to remember!

[Rossco]

Yeah that whole episode of play was brilliant, and I guess part of the fun of the game is the highs and the lows you experience from it.


In response to Scetcz, the engine requires a decent PC to run at full specs so you should be able to play it but just not at high level. It's easy to do too, as smouty says the programs you can download do it all for you and keep the mod updated when necessary. The only problem is that it could be superseded by the standalone in the next month now so for some people who don't have it yet, you may be better off waiting until then.