DayZ

This game is without a doubt the single worst case of buyers remorse that I've had in last three hundred and sixty five days regarding videogames and maybe regarding any purchase for that matter. But, I don't know who is exactly to blame though, is it my fault or is it the developers fault?

DayZ is a pretty unique game in that it started off as a modification in another game and grew to become so popular that it evolved into its own game. Yes there are other games that have the same story like Dota 2, that doesn't change the fact that this isn't really the normal progression that games take in the standard development cycle. Whether you agree with that or not though doesn't change the fact that DayZ was both published and developed by Bohemia Interactive, that company that owned Arma 2, which was the game that the DayZ mod was developed on. As a result it should be no surprise that DayZ is not only a PC exclusive but only playable on Windows.

I can't really follow a standard review structure when I come and talk about DayZ, which isn't entirely fair to the game, but at the same not touching on the point I'm going to talk about isn't fair to the consumer. DayZ was released on Steam as an early access game back in December 2013 and has remained in its alpha status since then and I'm pretty sure it will still be in Alpha long after this review gets published. What this means is that the game is broken/unfinished/raw/what ever word you want to use to describe it to suite your point of view. At the end of the day they all mean that the game is missing features since its not a complete product yet with some of these features being huge and other being very marginal. The developers aren't hiding this fact though, there are giant warnings that the game is in alpha and that you have to take into consideration that at this point its a broken game that you are buying into. That doesn't make the entire situation aboveboard though, as of May 2014 over 2 million units of the game has been sold if we assume a sales price of 20 dollars to account for Steam sales that still comes out to 40 million dollars a sum of money that makes me feel this game should be much much better than it currently is. Especially when games like Starcraft II and Watch Dogs only cost 100 and 68 million dollars respectively. I'm then made even more uncomfortable with the fact that Bohemia have come out and stated that game is going to become even more expensive as they develop it further which just makes me feel like they don't really have any respect for us as customers.

Before going any further I do want to state that I've had fun playing DayZ so far, but the fun I can't say is really driven by the game's mechanics. Its driven by me and my friends as we joke around and make the best of what the game currently is. Its this state where we're the source of the fun and not the game that worries me about DayZ. The game after six months of development still has not reached a point for it alone feels compelling with the only fun people derive from the game being through the friends or other random players. There is just so little content in the game that in its current state the only thing you can fairly call it is a 'walking simulator'. I haven't even touched on some of the aspects of the game are broken that make playing this game just so much fun (can you feel the sarcasm through your screen). Zombies clip through doors all the time, zombies give and give up chasing you for no good reason as the sound and sight detection don't seem to be entirely working how they should. Melee weapons don't seem to really connect the way they should when fighting both people and zombies. Some items just plain don't function even though the menu option is there to click on, so you just kind of feel like a confused pet as you do the same thing over and over again with nothing actually happening.

This is aside from the fact that even in full servers the game feels empty. I've had a few dozen characters and only one of them has actually been shot to death, the others all died of either thirst or starvation as they walked around armed to the teeth with tons of items. It just seemed hilarious to me that I usually died alone or right next to my friend due to hunger or thirst because we simply just could not find anything to eat or drink in the game despite going into hundreds of buildings and in some cases killing people we came across in the hope that maybe we could find something. All of that always ended with nothing in terms of food and drink and one of us would always fall over dead while the other person watched before them self falling over dead. Hell, I was left wondering where these various YouTubers found any of the people they did to make all their videos. But I guess those are the perks of YouTube fame, you can actually get people to cooperate with you in order to make a game look way more fun than it actually is and end up tricking people into buying that game.

All my play sessions were essentially me spawning, running around try to find my friends, finding them, joking around and then dying of thirst or starvation over and over again. It got boring really fast. The game just doesn't have content to actually support itself at this stage and I understand that since its an alpha that is to be expected. But maybe, you shouldn't charge thirty dollars for it at this stage, lower the price because even after its done I can't imagine it being worth more than thirty dollars. Raising the price beyond forty even when its finished would be something equal in stupidity to the way Elder Scrolls Online was priced, just a garbage experience compared to what the developers are actually asking you to pay.

Here I am dying of hunger and thirst again.

Like I said earlier, I regret buying this game. But the blame is split between me and developer since I can't say I wasn't warned. I just fell victim to the insane public relations work that DayZ got with tons of awards being given before its even finished development, before it even became anything more than a texture rendering exercise. These awards in my opinion were as premature as the Noble committee awarding Barack Obama his peace prize when he first got elected, its just like, Why? I'm not denying that it may not at some point achieve greatness but at this moment and time it just doesn't deserve all that praise. DayZ simply isn't worth getting now, its just a promise and not even one that the consumer can hold the developer legally to, its not worth the risk and I hope that this review stops people from making the same mistake that I did and actually buy the game due to buying into the hype.