Day Z is the trending game of this month with an explosion of let’s plays being uploaded at the moment giving an astronomical boost to its exposure, but why is this game being so heavily praised?
To those that don’t know, Day Z is a zombie survival mod for the military simulation game ARMA II. I’m sure fellow zombie enthusiasts would agree that there really is a lack of realism associated with zombie games and scanning a library of zombie games will only reveal wave based game types, such as Nazi Zombies and Killing Floor and level based zombie games such as Left 4 Dead but the setting of a zombie apocalypse really screams for an open world without restrictions, Dead Rising featured an open world but obviously its over the top nature was far from the realism craved. This is where Day Z comes in to play.
Day Z is a truly non Linear and open world experience, there are no restrictions on which towns you can go to and no set missions, you create your own experience with your movements and players around you. Your experiences to begin with will definitely revolve around survival, this isn’t the type of game that is encouraging you to rack up as many zombie kills as you can unless you have a death wish, instead you are simply trying to scavenge enough food, water, ammunition and medical supplies as you can.
You are depowered to the point of making you useless and yet you still feel motivated to keep going and try and build your character up with loot you’ve scavenged. Interactions with other survivors can change rapidly with some of them wanting to band together to try and last longer in numbers or other bandits who would rather try to kill you for supplies.
The element of survival is heightened when you take into account that once you die you lose everything, whether you’ve survived for a couple minutes or a whole week you will die just like everyone else.
The zombies awareness should also be noted as it greatly effects the way you play, in the pitch black of night it may be smart to use a road flare to light your surroundings but of course this will attract hordes, when you’re being hunted down by one zombie it may be tempting to try and shoot at it but you then run the risk of surrounding zombies hearing the gun fire, there are a great deal of ways the zombies interact with players and I’m sure it will be furthered with updating patches.
To anyone thinking they have what it takes, just remember the average survival time is only half an hour….
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