Friday, March 22, 2013

If You Haven't Heard Of It: DayZ, an ArmA 2 mod


Welcome to a new series that I am entitling "If You Haven't Heard Of It". This series will talk about various games, and beers, which have been around for awhile and we feel the need to inform you about, just in case, you have not heard of it. Seems pretty self explanatory now that I write it out... ah well...

So what is DayZ? 

DayZ is a very popular mod for ArmA2: Combined Ops for the PC. It consists of you playing in a persistent ish) world in which you are survivor who washes ashore into a post infection, former soviet state named Chernarus. Oh... and by post infection we mean post "OH MY GOD ZOMBIES!" infection.... ya... god damn zombies...

You start with nothing but a flashlight, a bandage and some painkillers... and its up to you to scavenge anything else from the world around you. From blood bags, to gutting a pig for its meat and then cooking it, to a backpack and ghillie suit, from a car to a helicoptor, or from a double barrel shotgun to an AS50 sniper rifle... 

Oh by the way... its not just the zombies you have to watch out for... The game also has a unique aspect to it that anything you get is loot-able off you when you die, so when zombies kill you other players can loot your body until the server you are on restarts.... that's right there are other survivors on this island.

The other survivors can be friendly... but most are not. They want what you have, because they need your scarce food and drink, your ammo, your gun, your car.... Others might want to team up with you to help each other survive against roving groups of bandits. Some might trick you into thinking they are that kinda guy. Some people don't even carry weapons, preferring to just bandage, morphine and blood-bag their fellow survivors, to be a true hero!

Welcome to DayZ, where the people are just as scary as the zombies.

As for my opinion on the game, I love it. I find both the zombie aspect of the game as well as the player interaction to be extremely rewarding and extremely terrifying. The game can be played in a number of settings, I recommend trying to find a server that does not have cross-hairs or nameplates (most decent servers do not anymore) If you are feeling -really- frisky play on an Expert server that does not allow 3rd person. The zombies hit harder and its harder to spot your fellow players.

If you are looking for a good set of servers that is almost always populated and generally hacker free? I recommend the set of 4 BMRF servers. However you have to be whitelisted in order to play on it, which means you have to go to their website: bmrf.me and sign up for the forums. It can take anywhere from an hour to a day, but it is worth the wait.

As for me you will most likely find me playing on BMRF #3 or #4 and sometimes on the Expert server which is BMRF#2.... I am sure you can work out my name on there.

If you readers have any topic you would like me to cover in a post, or have an article you would like to have posted on the blog shoot me an email at imasentinel@gmail.com

So If You Haven't Heard Of DayZ? Well now you have... hope you check it out!

2 comments:

  1. Just a heads up there Steve, (Clown here) You may as well advertise the in-production DayZ standalone over the mod. It's in internal testing now
    http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/

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    Replies
    1. Good point Clown (btw get a gmail account and follow the blog!)

      The standalone is coming, but when is still quite up in the air, hopefully more information will be released soon.

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