dayz standalone sucksFor a game that started its Alpha stage with 88,000 players in under 12 hours and for a game that’s constantly on top of Steam bestselling titles, you would expect DayZ to be THE game to play. I mean, why would millions of people play a crappy game – one that was already successful as a mod? It has to be great, right? Well… not so much!

I’ve decided to wait for the hype go down regarding DayZ and hear the unsatisfied voices, but they never came. So I decided to take some cash out of my real life pockets and get the virtual survival game, ready for a completely new experience compared to the mod DayZ and for some true survival action. The results? Not so impressive.

Since I don’t have any friends playing the game, I have joined a random server. For some reason, I never am able to find a really populated server with a latency lower than 100, so I got into the most popular at that time: 16 players giving it a go at survival. Number of players I met during the 68 minutes I’ve played the game? ZERO. Fun level? ZERO.

It was fun and “WTF” during my first try, though: as soon as I spawned, I saw some houses and headed towards them. Out of nowhere a zombie appeared and started going for my brains. Having nothing on me and realizing that my fate is doomed, I tried to Rocky his face to pieces, but failed. Game over after two or three minutes and time for a fresh start.

I should’ve stopped there and call it a great experience. When I started again, I found myself in a slightly larger area of houses that I considered to be the paradise for any looter. First three houses were empty and I couldn’t even open all the doors: the dressers seemed filled with clothes, but I couldn’t check them out. There were books and stuff near the bed, but I couldn’t interact with them.

Basically, DayZ Standalone is the same sad mod in which you don’t get to do ANYTHING. The fun part of survival: searching for items and finding all sorts of useless crap, as it would be the case in any real life apocalypse situation is completely missing. There are very few and very random items thrown away at random in the game (so I found some canned food in a barn and an axe in a bedroom) and they’re so limited that even a minimalist would cry. For a change, give Project Zomboid a try to feel the difference (it’s not multiplayer and plays in a different perspective, but still does the whole survival thing better)

And what saddened me the most is that there’s not much of a difference between the mod and the standalone game. Everything looks mostly the same, everything is mostly the same and if you are alone – like I was – everything is extremely boring. After my bad luck with the first try that got me killed in just a couple of minutes, second try had me looking and begging for zombies for more than 30 minutes – enough time to get me “awesome” loot after searching through a million and a half empty houses: an axe, some gloves, a jacket, some bandages, a screwdriver to open my canned food and a biker’s helmet that was, just like all biker helmets, in another barn.

I was thirsty for most of the time and the area I visited had just one fountain I could drink water from. This despite the fact that all houses had sinks (which, OK, might not work after a while during the apocalypse). But sinks AND having a fountain outside makes no sense. Just like many other things in DayZ Standalone. But it’s a game, after all!

Well, apparently not, because most of the people I hear praise it for how realistic it is. No, it’s not realistic at all. It’s boring if you are alone, like me. There was no fear that there’s a zombie after a corner, there was no fear that my character might die, I mostly couldn’t even prepare for anything as zombies seemed to appear out of nowhere, ready to taste the metal of my axe in some really crappy melee.

And my 68 minutes of supreme boredom made me understand that DayZ Standalone is not an amazing game, not at all. However, it can be amazing. Not as a game per se, because all the things it’s lacking are making it terrible (I know it’s an alpha, but it still doesn’t look much different than the mod). However, what makes DayZ Standalone amazing is the community. The players, the people who play the game.

I had so much fun in other instances playing on servers with a ton of people, meeting the crazy bandints, meeting the funny scared rabbits who had no equipment and kept running, meeting the bands of survivors that were trying to have fun on their own. That’s what makes DayZ Standalone so fun. Not the zombies, not the “survival” not anything else. The players.

So if you really want to experience anything but a terrible game, make sure that you join a populated server and that you’re not alone. Otherwise boredom will kill you faster than the zombies.

15 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve seen some streams a week ago and the game seems boring… It’s jsut like Elder Scrolls Online, huge hype for a famous franchise but then the expectations do not correspond to the final product.

  2. I played only a bit of Day Z the mod
    from my experience, i don’t really find the community good, or even mature
    mostly it seems that a lot of console community migrated to pc
    well, there was one time, when i found a Lee Enfield
    well, and basically i was killed for it, the one that killed me, came up to me, and called me a “f**** cu**”

  3. Wow, so lets go trough this once again, you bought an very early alpha game that even thee developers say not to buy at the moment, and you reviewed it like a full release game? These reviewers keep getting better and better.

    • This was not a review. It was an opinion article which is completely allowed here on Earth, especially since there are thousands of articles praising the same alpha version of the same game. Should only the positive opinions be accepted?

  4. I hope rocket goes through this and picks up a couple of these things.
    I think you’re making a couple of good points about for example
    the helmets, lack of interaction (why is there a lot of stuff you cant interact with while its for example “a book”), the dressers (this is where logically most clothes should spawn), redundancy of fountains and sinks, and that the map is still 90% the same as dayz mod.
    On the other side you should consider this is an pre alpha with good latency servers (if you’re not in the middle of nowhere with a bad ISP), workable melee system and great potential of fun ( if you invest the time to get friends and learn the quirks).

    ps, i hope one day there wont be any quirks left in dayz

    Besides these points I love the game because of the player interactions and the intensity of them. This is the only game that really gives me an adrenaline rush.

    • That’s what I said, but apparently not everybody bothers to read to the end. It’s a game that’s great to play with other players. The interactions are what make it so great, the randomness of people you meet. Add to that extra survival options – I saw that hunting is being prepared to be introduced in the game – and you get everything to a new level.

  5. I can’t speak for your experience on the server you joined or the list of available servers. But from my experience in Australia , There is atleast 50 servers available and they all have less than 100ms ping. The game is Alpha and that should be kept in mind , IT IS BUGGY!

    The overall experience I’ve had has been a 7/10 , and thats pretty good for a game early in development.

    The fact that the developers are listening to the community and not adding microtransactions or having safezones is what makes the game true to a survival horror.

    This game is not a money grab similiar to War Z or other games that have come along.

    If your someone who wants a final polished product , avoid the game otherwise give it it go!

  6. i have them game, and yea it blows.
    definately should wait for the full release. but even then, at this current pace it will be so outdated its not funny.
    mates and i went back to the arma2 mod of dayz, more fun established and better equipment options.

  7. The game sucks. It’s optimized so poorly that even people with high pc specs are getting frustrated at their 20 fps in cities.

    I just spent an hour running to balota to loot the base there, but come to find out they removed it.

    The spawns are terrible, you literally have to run for hours to get any good loot, and chances are the loot is already taken and since the spawn system is so messed up there’s little chance that it will spawn back.

    Server hopping gets you penalized, I mean who wants to get all of their gear removed after you just spend 2 hours getting somewhere where good loot is suppose to be.
    If you enjoy collecting hats and useless loot for hours on end, I recommend you buy this game. If you’re looking for some fun action, I suggest playing the mod. I know it’s still an alpha, but all of the “fixes” they keep rolling out with just make the game more difficult to play.

    I don’t think I’ll ever buy another Bohemia game. Until they fix their game engines.

  8. Guess what, it’s now a year later and the game still sucks. It’s doomed because it’s on a failed engine, Rocket has pocketed dough and jet, and the community is discussing POOPING FOR GOD SAKES. They are considering dumb things like adding taking a crap in the game. The whole project is indeed rudderless, fix the engine, add zombies, and focus on the core of the game for peat sakes!

  9. The standalone sucks, like davet said, Rocket realized that the game was a failure so took our money and ran like a little bitch

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