DayZ

Day Z is a game I have a lot of nostalgia for, I played the mod back in the day and actually sunk a fair chunk of time into the mod of a mod Day Zero. I never got ‘good’ at the game but I did manage at one point to get a fairly successful camp going and I still remember my first PvP kill in surprising detail considering this must have been well over 8 years ago now. But for all its jank, it was kinda fine, it was in development, it was a mod, it was ‘free’ (so to speak) - it was something new and it was constantly changing & developing. 

Life moves on, I left Liverpool, I left PC gaming behind and I forgot about Day Z. I saw from time to time a few memes and articles about Day Z ‘Standalone’ and it’s troubled development. A zombie game without zombies at one point, but above all a doubling down on ‘survival’ and survival mechanics. Which I must be honest, turned me off somewhat, (not that I had access to the game at that point in time anyway).

Years pass and hey, with not much preamble and a fairly slick (for DayZ) PS4 release trailer it was back on my radar. I used to play this game with a good friend from School (I’m deep into my 30s right now so don’t misunderstand that I played DayZ in school - quake 2 on the school IT lan was as close as I got to networked gaming until I was like 16) and we kind of went down a Nostalgia hole together on WhatsApp and sure enough hours later we were both £39.99 poorer. 

One of the first things you see on PS4 is the menu screen draw in with frankly the worst lod and texture popping I’ve ever seen during my time as not only a gamer, but also working in the industry for 15 years. Not a great start. Attempting to get into a new game is unwieldy as all hell and I’ve found that on repeat plays I typically get punished(?) with an extended loading time because I’ve changed server. Yet, I cannot find my server history in the browser… is that is even what’s happening?

Err nice one :(

I have huge issues with the lack of readability of everything in this game, I don’t necessarily mean regarding the legibility of prompts and text (though that aint great either). Think of how you look at a given image from a video game, how easy is it for you to quickly understand what’s going on? Where are the points of interest, what’s your characters situation, what can be interacted with nearby? Now with DayZ, you have a 225km2 area to explore and you are pretty much free to choose where you want to go, but that still shouldn’t mean that everything should have the same prominence, that would result in a rather flat & bland experience. And for a game where a huge part of the gameplay is about finding loot its honestly quite surprising that this is the case in DayZ.

Trying to pick out a tiny box of matches (or even a shotgun) on top or a desk or against a concrete floor is a nightmare. It is so frustrating walking into flatly lit room after flatly lit room, struggling to find anything because nothing stands out and if you do find an object within the messy texture work, trying to pick up it and then understand/know where that item is actually going to go in your Inventory and how to use it is another battle entirely.

The thing is, for a game where inventory management is so important, the Inventory system is absolutely horrendous on console (It looks like it’d be barely better on PC, but I haven’t tried it) there’s no feedback on invalid or valid actions, I’m holding this Axe, how do I put it on my shoulder to free up my hands to pick up another object, can I even do that? Oh I’ve dropped the Axe, ok, I can pick up that glow stick now, that’s in my bag, great my hands are free… can I pick up my Axe again? No? What is going on? 

So basically, I cannot retrieve this Axe from this hoodie I’ve just placed on the floor for the Demin Jacket I am currently wearing because ??????

While I can see what they are trying to go for, a hyper survivalist take on a Zombie sandbox, given how joyless it is to inventory manage my situation, why on earth would I want to load a magazine manually? Why would I want to find a quiet place and struggle with the Inventory system for 10 minutes to load the correct ammunition into the correct magazine, it certainly isn’t the type of gameplay I was after when I signed up for more DayZ after a near decade long hiatus.  

DayZ struggles to run on my PS4 Pro, using binoculars is a thankless painful experience with stutters a plenty and again, more horrendous pop-in. If I had the keys to the franchise, I’d probably suggest that they change the entire art direction for the game, make a hard turn towards lo-fi assets and focus on being able to pump out this scale at 60fps on these consoles. If anything Day Z needs to be more readable, objects need to ‘pop’ against their backgrounds & feedback for the player needs to be a hell of a lot more than a few icons and bars in the bottom corner of their screen. But also to make this game stand on it’s own merits, so what do I mean by this?

Playing during GMT primetime? Enjoy the darkness - carrots cannot save you in this realm.

So I am a father now, I’m no longer able to come home from work and sink hours and hours a night into scavenging around the villages of Chernarus, but even so I do not remember it being so difficult to build up a head of steam in this game and actually start to have… fun?

A lot of my early sessions on this game have been me frantically searching for a drink. You know, those zombie adventures you want to live out, running from the horde, exploring cool locations maybe finding yourself some better kit and weapons… no, what you need to be doing is finding as many can of ‘pipsi’ as you can, because your character is literally going to die from thirst within 30 minutes. I’ve seen plenty of comment threads on this and a common theme is “You just need to play the game more before you start complaining” “there are plenty of sources of water”. Well, that’s me told. 

My argument on this boils down to the following;

It’s far too punishing to build up a head of steam & get up to speed with the basics of this game (Combat, Exploration & Survival). Basic loot is far too scarce, meaning that it’s much more difficult to “learn” the game than it should be - how would a player new to this game realise that they can do the following to manage thirst?

Find water sources at crashed up rafts and wooden boats on the shore? That they can drink from fresh water sources like streams and water pumps without getting sick? That they can purify ‘bad’ water sources by finding the means to store water and boil it/use water purification tablets? How do they even do that when there is a really short time between spawning in before your character starts suffering from thirst & ultimately dying. This then results in the player needing to rush around attempting to find a water source, not easy to do when you aren’t familiar with the game. Frustration abounds, it’s highly likely the player dies, restarts in new location and the cycle begins again.

This leaves DayZ in a really weird place where the objectively best option now is to stop playing the game and go learn what you need to do via the Internet. Then maybe you can then keep playing and get some more entertainment dollar for your purchase.

If there is a rhetorical question to this, then perhaps it is this: Is it better to learn via doing or is it better for the player to stop playing and go to the DayZ Campus at the University of Google?

Chernarus can be a genuinely breathtaking place with it’s sheer scale and nature… but close up the game is rough as hell on console. Visual issues are everywhere.

I’d argue that it is far too difficult to learn to be a survivor while actually playing DayZ, you need to learn how to be a survivor before you play it. I’d wager that there are rather few gamers out there right now that would be prepared to go in cold in the space year 2019 and deal with this games shit and actually become good at this game on it’s own terms without them also taking the time investment to delve into the community resources that have developed alongside this game all these years. That’s a big time investment for anyone. And is it worth it? Why would you want to keep playing DayZ? DayZ absolutely needs to lean on some established tutorial tropes, have an objective & waypoint system, guide the player along and teach them the tools to survive in your game.

Day Z is a fairly unique beast in that it is a mod that has developed into a full standalone retail release for PC/Xbox and now PS4, there’s a lot of history there, a lot of patch notes, discussions, YouTube let’s plays, wikis, maps and a a dedicated fanbase that while dwindling from it’s heights back when it was an Arma 2 mod is still very much active. Perhaps the culture of the game has developed around that discussion ‘offline’ from Chernarus, how the game has developed and fans have been a part of that processs. This has resulted in a wealth of online/third party resources for the game, want to figure out where to get the best loot, go look it up on google, download a map app from the App Store. It's just not a sensible option to attempt to acquire that knowledge in game, the systems at play are far too opaque and I think that’s where the key issue with Day Z lives. 

So far, so negative, why then, have I wrote so much about this game? Well if there’s one thing that DayZ does so well and so uniquely, it’s stress and to try and illustrate that; here is a short story of my last session on DayZ. 

I spawned not far from Cherno, near a small village. It’s been a few days since I last played and par for the course I have no food or water. I do have a pistol though but I’m never one for P2P in DayZ, I circle around and set about the relentlessly frustrating process that is finding a water source in this fucking game. Shortly after searching a couple houses I enter a taller building with a flat upstairs and find some pipsi cola - finally I can keep dying of thirst at bay for another 10 minutes. At this point I’m wondering why I’m playing this game again, but hey here I am - let’s see if I can get some momentum going. 

For some reason during this session I’m much more aware of the local wildlife, there are some sheep and chickens pottering about the town. There are few walkers and I was able to sneak near and kill one without fuss with my baseball bat while moving through the village. Feels like I am completely alone here. There’s a barn nearby and I head inside, the experience of looting very frustrating as items often get lost in the muddy textures and this barn is no exception, finding nothing on the ground level I head up some stairs on the inside of this barn and then I hear it...

... was that footsteps? 

It’s quiet, save for the sheep nearby & I turn to face the entrances to the barn. I’m elevated up, a fairly safe space, I raise my pistol and aim at the doorway nearest to the direction I think the footstep sounds came from. 

More footsteps, I feel my heartbeat rising, something weird about these sounds though, whoever it is they aren’t moving around a lot. I hold my position. 

More footsteps, closer. 

I continue to wait, my heartbeat is definitely rising. 

Movement! Something is entering slowly through the door... stress

It takes a few agonising mili-seconds… but that’s a sheep, I chuckle, hit the SHARE button and save the clip. Crisis over right? The sheep baas in the barn and continues to walk through the barn, I decide the venture out, feeling that on the balance of probabilities the footsteps I heard where of the various sheep nearby and not some other player. All the same though I descend the stairs slowly and carefully.

I reach te ground level and turn towards the sound of the sheep and pitter patter of feet, edging around the door with my pistol raised. More sheep, one directly in front of me, another one about 10 feet further behind. I begin to relax... 

A hatchet buries itself into the back of the distant sheep’s head, my heartbeat explodes in intensity, pulling their hatchet out of the sheep’s head is another survivor, dark jacket... black motorcycle helmet. They turn ever so slightly towards me as they where going about butchering the poor sheep.

Fight or Flight? 

They see me and immediately starts running to their left to try and break line of sight.

I fumble to try and find the push to talk button, I don’t find it (have I mentioned the controls are terrible?) as I do this I try and track my target but I’m still inside the barn and lose sight of him. 

Fight or Flight? 

Flight. 

I only have a pistol and a single magazine, I back out of the barn quickly - I see a notification that the motorbike helmeted person is trying to talk - but no audio. Fuck it, not taking a chance. I turn and sprint through the town. My heartbeat is POUNDING.

I leave the town via a nearby tree line, sprinting most of the way. I don’t think I was followed but I keep running until I put a couple KM between me and that encounter. I live to search for water another day... 

The cowardly boi as I logged off… never did get my Hatchet back :(

Now that is experience that sets DayZ apart from other games I’ve played. That stress, when DayZ connects, makes for a powerful experience.

All that said though, I just cannot recommend this game to anyone coming at it fresh, DayZ Standalone is just such a frustrating janky mess that despite the highs and sheer visceral experiences it can provide I just can’t recommend this at RRP. If you can find it for super cheap and are prepared to read up before you drop in, then maybe.  

Day Z needs a rebirth, the concept still has legs, Chernarus is still a fantastic setting for a video game. But Day Z as of right now, those legs are shattered, broken and in desperate need of rehabilitation. It needs to figure out what it is and actually deliver the experience of discovery and learning the games myriad systems and mechanics within the actual game. Day Z needs to “stand alone” as its own thing.

Thanks, I’ll get my coat… now if only I could figure out how to equip it…