Musings on... Day Z

And lo, we return to the realms of obscurity once more. Day Z is a zombie mod for the military simulation ArmA 2, and is proving incredibly popular. There's a pretty good reason for that though.

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I've just realised that somehow I've never gotten around to reviewing ArmA 2 on here. Suffice it to say (for now) that ArmA 2 is one of my favourite games of all time. A massive, entirely open world, with a free-form campaign and an incredible mission editor, which allows you to do pretty much anything (case in point). It also has a fairly active modding scene, including World War II and, of course, zombies, in the guise of Day Z.

Yes, that's right, more zombies, because they haven't had that much exposure in recent years (snark snark). But wait! What's this? Truly open world? A beautiful landscape to explore? Permanent death? Characters kept over multiple servers (it's multiplayer only)? Crushing instability leading to random losses of gear and/or life? Well other than the last one, that sounds like pretty much the perfect zombie game. And in a way it is.

The majority of servers are only about 50 players maximum, but as everyone spawns along the coastline (you may want to look at this map to help you), you do often bump into other players. Obviously in order to attain more gear and food, you need to raid towns and cities, leading to many confrontations with other players. Usually these turn out badly, as everyone inherently mistrusts everyone else, and when permadeath is involved, getting betrayed with a shot to the back of the head is pretty annoying let me tell you.

Key to this is the humanity system. Essentially, as you murder more people, your humanity drops. When it hits zero, you get classed as a bandit, and everyone will know to shoot you on sight. But it's the trade-off. The increase in weapons, food and drinks, the lack of the weight of where your next meal will come from. And if you have a few buddies to rove around with, most people won't be able to fight you properly (the combat damage is scaled back from normal ArmA 2. And always the threat of zombies. Fire your weapon, and dozens will flood you, slowly nibbling away at your health.

This game is all about experience. You probably won't know how I generally perceive the value of a game, but essentially the three criteria are fun, experience and story. It is a fun mod to be sure, especially if you have some friends on Skype or something. The experience is unparalleled. It's literally the perfect zombie game, it's what you always imagine when you think zombie apocalypse. It's pretty much like playing the game of 28 Days Later, but in Eastern Europe not England. And story. Well, there technically isn't an actual story, but it's the stories that happen as you play it. It's the Total War thing, that over the course of playing, you'll come up with numerous stories, last stands, brutal moments, hilarious accidents, whatever.

You don't know how long it took to find these guys.

Take one of mine. I'm still using the rubbish starting pistol, only have a couple of tins food left and it's dusk (dark is dark in this game). I'm at the outskirts of, I think (you have to find in-game maps), a large industrial city. I don't venture into the city, having heard gunfire and seen people running there earlier. Instead, I head up the main road a while, and find a small clump of buildings. I can see a couple of zombies wandering about, but nothing threatening, so I move in to the porch of a small building, having spotted some supplies. I bend down and start seeing what I've found, when a zombie screams right behind me. Apart from jumping a mile, I spin round and empty essentially a whole clip into him. Unfortunately that attracts a heck of a lot more zombies, and soon I realise I'm not going to make it out alive. So I do the manly thing, and take as many down with me as I can, firing my pistol in the crowd as they slowly munch on me. I die in a pile of zombies, eaten alive for being too hasty.

So it's pretty great really, and the amazing thing is, if you buy ArmA 2: Combined Operations (which is required to play) you get the basic ArmA 2, which is fantastic, and the amazing Arrowhead expansion, set in the fictional Middle-East. Both are brilliant, the mod is brilliant, everything relating to this game is brilliant. Just get out there and buy it.