DayZ, The Zombie Horror Survival Mod That Resurrected a Dead Franchise

It is populated with towns, harbors, military camps and airports all teeming with zombies and perhaps even more worrisome, other players. However, in DayZ if you don’t explore, take risks, and crawl your way past the patrolling undead, you’ll die of thirst, hunger, or even exposure. The realism is at times both awe inspring and annoying. Your initial spawn gear is absolutely minimal, with only a flashlight, bandages and pain killers. Gear only suitable for one mishap or injury, and note that you don’t start with any kind of weapon. You have to go find one. DayZ takes it one step further, as if bleeding out from a wound or dying from prolonged exposure to cold wasn’t enough, by no longer offering the player a permanent character. If you die in DayZ, your loot, food, and guns are all left for the scavengers on the cold ground and you start over again, on the beach of a random coastal town.

The day and night cycle is uniquely terrifying, where servers follow the timezone of their location. If you log onto a Seattle server at 9pm, expect to be running around scared to the core with your flashlight bouncing off of distant shapes as you attempt to find items. How long is it dark out? Depends on when sunrise is for the server’s time zone. That’s right, the night cycle is an eight hour, nearly perfect blanket of terror perforated only by your screams and feeble flashlight. You can learn much more about this amazing game at dayzmod.com or check out our newbie guide to your first day in DayZ here.

PC Gamer summarized the Arma II engine perfectly: “The inconsistency is more than comedic: there are frozen enemies, stuck allies, ridiculous vehicle crashes and awkward movement to contend with. It never functions 100% correctly, and makes the fidelity they’re striving so hard for impossible to achieve. 

DayZ is built upon the community modifiable engine of the game Arma II. Arma II was, for the dedicated fans of the military sim-shooter franchise, a welcome step forward. The “Real Virtuality 3” engine was, at least on the surface a graphical beauty queen. There was however, as gamer mags and bloggers would lament, a dark underbelly of glitches, bugs and faults. PC Gamer summarized it perfectly: “The inconsistency is more than comedic: there are frozen enemies, stuck allies, ridiculous vehicle crashes and awkward movement to contend with. It never functions 100% correctly, and makes the fidelity they’re striving so hard for impossible to achieve. These issues remain in DayZ, because as players must come to understand, this game is merely stacked on top of a flawed engine. It must also be noted that after eight hours in the game, I’ve forgiven or forgotten the bugs and have learned to play “around” the shortcomings of the engine. I don’t throw guns on the ground when changing around gear without first putting something replaceable down first, as the map is liable to swallow up items at random. The inventory system is so painful that I only look through my backpack when hunkered down in a bush, five miles from the nearest city. I almost never play alone, as having friends with you greatly increases your survival chances especially when sharing supplies and defensive duties. I trust, no one. (Check out our player’s guide about surviving your first day in DayZ)

There are some shining examples of how detailed the engine is though, such as the in game voice system that works off of proximity. Within 60 meters you can shout out to other players in your immediate vicinity, just know that the zombies can hear you too. DayZ also accounts for terrain and weather when calculating your noise and visibility. Your character makes less noise on grass then pavement, as noted by the ear icon in your hud. When you crouch you are less visible to zombies than if you are standing, which is also indicated by an icon in your display. When it rains, your footsteps are quieter. In the dark, zombies can’t see you well either, until you make a lot of noise or shine your light around. The in game voice system also builds wonderfully tense encounters. You’ll often hear people call out “Friendly in Electro”, indicating they see you in the town of Electro and that supposedly, they aren’t going to kill you and rob your corpose. Every time someone has spotted me in a town, they’ve shot me dead before I could even offer them a can of beans from my backpack. I still hold out hope for a chance encounter with someone not playing as a “bandit,” even though as a play style, it makes perfect sense.

Overall, it’s hard to not love the game. I respect its genius and I also vehemently curse its name when something goes wrong that is out of my control, such as graphical glitches or that one random zombie who sees me from two miles out. There are numerous bugs, and be prepared to spend a decent amount of time tweaking the install and the settings. DayZ is in alpha stage, meaning its far from finished, but with its ever expanding player base, expect constant updates until as rumored, a standalone finished game comes out by the end of the year. To understand just how popular this alpha release has been, note that the sales of Arma II Combined Operations have increased 500 percent since the mod’s release. I need to go home and log back on.