My review as of now

[erocean 21]

Hey guys,

 

Tons of my community members where asking me what I thought of Dayz so far, instead of answering a million questions I decided to go ahead and give them a brief view of what I thought initially of the game. Obvisouly everyone's opinions are going to different but I figured this may help some people that haven't decided to buy into Standalone yet or not. Many appreciated the review from both myself and another member of my community that never played much Dayz or Arma so if you like LONG bits of information or others opinions... feel free to look. I have been adding things as I run into them and others are putting up their opionions but here is the original one from myself to my community. Enjoy!

 

Original below:

 

I played last night from about 6pm - 11pm stopping for dinner and to help around the house but for the most part I got atleast 5 hours into it. I may not be the best one to give a review because I am a huge dayz fanboy but here is what I thought so far imho. EDIT: I moved this final thought to the top since I am sure most of you won't read all this and are only looking for one thing:

DO I THINK YOU SHOULD BUY IT? NO... unless you are a fan boy as I am I would say you will probably just get mad and not play it anyhow... then piss and moan because I cost you $30 for a game that is in Alpha state. At which point you will tell others on our forums about how bad you think the game is and I will just have to tell you to shut up. SO to save all of that... and me hurting your feelings, just wait. The PVP try hards from Dayz Mod and Warz... you are not going to like this game right now.

EDIT: I am changing my BUY IT to yes. The reason I changed my answer to yes, I forgot that the game price will go up in Beta Release and Full Release. If you truly think you might play it in the future Purchase it now for cheap, then just sit on it until its finished to save your money.

Now if you are patient, looking for something different and want the feeling back we had in the dayz mod of "trying to survive" I think you will get it here. Cthru hated Dayz mod, Arma II controls and Warz as well yet last night he was talking good things about it.

Game as a total in current state: 6.5/10

There are tons of things you could take away from the game... good or bad, I will make sure to list some of my favorites likes/dislikes below. Small things I am not really going to harp on much because as I stated before, I would have been completely fine with the mod all over again with less lag, better fps, less hackers, better zombies and fix some of the glitches fixed.

General Things:

• Controls: People are complaining about how hard it was to target things on the ground.... if you see something on the ground get close, hit tab and your inventory pops up on the screen. Things on the ground are on the left, your stuff on the right. Drag, drop... done. Getting your mouse in that "perfect" sweet spot is a pain in the ass don't even screw with it. Use the tab feature its 200x better.
• Opening Doors: Used to be a pain in the rear... run up scroll your mouse wheel up and down until you find that sweet spot then click enter or your action key to open. Now if you just run up to the door you can scroll wheel down and either hit "F" or "Middle mouse" and it will open it. Very VERY easy, the only thing that is still a bit difficult is getting loot off dead bodies, you still have to find that sweet spot from what I have noticed. That is annoying.

Likes that stood out:

• Night time: Dark, pretty creepy, scared myself a few times going around a corner running into a player with my flashlight and loved to have that feeling back. After awhile you just get used to it and didn't bother you.
• Inventory System: Some people hate it, I am not sure why I love the drag/drop feature
• New Game Feeling: Sure its the same map and some people are not liking that, but there has not been one map yet that I have enjoyed more than Chenarus. It brought me back to the old map feeling but LOADS of new stuff, even got lost a few times because things have changed tons.
• Looting: I know not everything in the game yet is in there, but I felt like I was scavenging to just stay alive.. once you get rolling with some stuff and can store away food I am sure that won't be the case but there were 2 times I was about to starve to death.
• Graphics: They look 10x better than the original Dayz mod, blow Warz out of the water. Anyone says different, they are dumb.... period
• FPS: I was getting at times around 80 FPS running through the woods and in some small towns... it did however drop to 30-40 in cities like Electro/Chenarus which I hope they can optimize better in the future but I have never touched above 30 fps in the Dayz mod.... and 60s was average in Wasteland if it was a fresh server restart.
• Interaction with others: I ran into multiple people yesterday, few groups of players, lots of lone wolfs. Few sang to me, others tried to bash my head in with a pipe wrench and another group of guys running around with no pants on tried to get me to take mine off. I dropped my wrench as they asked but when they told me to drop my bag and pants, I was almost dead so I said "I am not homo and do not plan on squealing like a piggy so I flipped them off in game ... and they shot me for my sins :/, It was funny however.
• PVP: This will change I am sure and more things are added to the game, or things get more balanced but every time I engaged into PVP last night was a pretty big risk... and most of the time I can away with an injury, bleeding or died a few times. Melee combat is no longer a 1 shot kill with an axe, depending on the weapon you have and how damaged it is will definetly will make you have to decide if you want to actually attempt to fight. They are definitely trying to steer people away from engaging in PVP every single time.... unless running with a group, it could cost you your life even if you win the fight.
• How to drink: The old Wells that were in about every city are still there... you can drink directly from them (this is kick ass) and then you can also fill up any water bottles that you have, also from Rivers/Lakes you run across as well.
• Rotten Food: I would suggest not eating unless you are going to pass out.. Hawk and I lived on some for awhile so after he left I continued to do the same thing. Apparently we were just getting lucky, because every time you eat rotten food you have a "chance" of getting sick. Happened to me once last night and I was not able to get myself healthy again. Finally passed out and I can assume a zombie was close because I was eaten.

DISLIKES

• Not sure what to call this: Moving around inside buildings can be difficult, they put tons of things in the way, chairs on the ground, tables knocked over, cabinets open and such to make it feel more "realistic" I assume. However, moving around these things are difficult sometimes and can be a pain in the ass. Lets just say.... there is no longer full sprinting into a building and back out within seconds if not loot to go to the next room. Now you must actually look around some.
• Food/Drink: Currently you actually have to work at staying alive, until you can build a stock pile (I haven't yet because I have to keep eating/drinking so much) then maybe it won't be such a pain. This also could be avoided if I wasn't sprinting around so much maybe LOL... even then though it still felt like we were burning through food/water quickly.
• Zombies: They are pretty dumb so unless you are just being dumb you should be fine. Unless they up the difficultly in these.. they will only be there to annoy people again. HOWEVER, if you shoot tons and stay in that area you will quickly be sorry. Think of it as walking dead style... slow, stupid and not real scary if your 1v1 or 1v2. However if multiple start closing in your best shot is to haul ass. I got trapped in a building after a fire fight last night with another group of people, had to waste all remaining ammo to just get out . I think they plan on adding TONS more zombies in the future though... so this will counter how easy it is at the current time, or atleast I hope they do.
• In game settings: They confirmed some of them are not working... mouse acceleration (off) is one of them that currently does nothing. There is a YOUTUBE VIDEO linked there to help with Mouse Smoothing and to better some FPS.
• Unconscious State: When getting knocked out, you cannot see anything, hear anything just a black screen that says your Unconscious. Sometimes it takes 10 seconds... I found another that took nearly 2 minutes (passed out from dehydration)... hopefully we can "learn" what causes what and how long you are out for because right now it seems a bit random? Maybe health level and other things have input into how that act but I am not sure.
• Bleeding: Sometimes you cannot tell you are bleeding (small wounds), so if you aren't watching for it or checking your tab menu you may miss it.

I will probably add more to this list as I think of it!

 

Thanks,

 

EroCeaN

www.youtube.com/EroceanTV

www.armoredfist.net

Steam Name: erocean

Edited December 19, 2013 by erocean

[erocean 21]

oh yes... forgot to add the review from another community member that is not a FANBOY by any means. He dispised Dayz/Warz and the lot.

 

Cthru's review below:

 

Cthru2k’s unfanboish review.


Disclaimer I have never been a fan of Arma’s clunky gameplay and inventory system. I also never really got into WarZ as much as some of you. Frankly I thought WarZ was fucken bad. But I will try to be as fair as I can. Considering I played from 7PM to 11PM PST a good 4 hours and played nothing else that night should be your first indication that the game has potential.


I will follow Erocean’s format throughout my this review.


DO I THINK YOU SHOULD BUY IT? Yes. Do you have $30 to spare right now? If yes, then buy it if you want to save $20 in the long run. Final price for this product will be $50. Realize this is Alpha and that you may not enjoy it till beta or maybe to it’s final release. Understand that my YES on buy is meant for FANS of the genre.


State of the Game I agree at 6.5 on a technical level.


General Things:


Controls: Controls are fine, actually they did not bother me much at all. The tab system works well for items near you so you can pick up without having to actually try to focus and click them into your inventory.

Opening Doors: Interacting with anything in general is easy, middle mouse button works for everything. I climbed up ladders, I climbed up into a train cart, I opened doors, all done by hitting the middle mouse button.


Likes that stood out:


Day/Night: Didn’t play at night time, it was my first time playing this game and I haven’t played Arma since Arma III’s Alpha, so I did not want to add anymore difficulty to my playing experience.

Inventory system: It was fine. It could use some improvement but with the scope of items that will be available this may be the best way to handle this sort of thing. Hitting TAB for inventory or hitting "I" (MMOs) all the same to me. The layout is reminiscent of Diablo II’s in a way.

New Game Feeling: Having never really played, this map or any other map would all be new to me.

Looting: From picking up various loot around the towns I noticed a lot of stuff is meant for a type of crafting system which I find myself excited for when it is implemented. For now it is just trash loot.

Graphics: Look good, I am very satisfied. Note that I despised WarZ’s shitty graphics but find DayZ’s graphics appealing. I do suggest that you do this though, TURN OFF Bloom, Motion Blur and Post Processing. It makes the game blurry.

FPS: Didn’t check, but everything felt smooth as butter.

Interaction: I heard a guy yelling for help near me apparently he was being chased by a zombie, I was sitting quietly in a Church praying for forgiveness. As he comes charging in screaming for help I did as any man of god would do and smash the zombies brains out with my trusty baseball bat, I then I proceeded to smash his brains out for interrupting my prayer.

PvP: Combat is clunky, but I assume it will get better. I never fired a gun so I don't know what its like to aim down sight and shoot anything.


Dislikes


Ditto to everything Ero said.


In closing.

If you are a fan of the genre I feel this game will be on your list of games you will enjoy. If you are looking to try this out do so at your own risk. It is Alpha and this genre is unforgiving, but I love a good sandbox.

[h3retic 224]

most of ur comments are related to the early alpha features that will be improved upon if not changed completely (e.g. dumb zombies).

 

my biggest issue  (and quite honestly the only - as i can deal with everything else) with the alpha right now is the very poor performance, usually working way worse than even the mod for arma 2 (electro, in places, barely runs at 25 frames, when even back in dayz mod it was about 35-40 for me) and i have a very good pc.

big cities in particular are frame killers to the point of it being quite frustrating.

Edited December 19, 2013 by h3retic

[erocean 21]

h3retic, yes I understand its Alpha as stated every where in my post. I was trying to give a detailed summary to "my community" on my thoughts because that would be the determining factor of them purchasing the game and what is happening at this very moment. They understand it will change but that doesn't matter... they wanted to know how/what I thought at this moment.

 

I changed just a few settings in the game (Still running graphics on default) I am doing fairly well inside cities. Last night I was still seeing 30-40 in Zel (not as big though as Chern/Electro) and 70-80s out in smaller towns and forest. I by no means have a alien super charged PC... standard by todays accounts so some changes here and there in game helped tons..

 

As you stated its Alpha and I am sure it will get better optimized as we go.

 

Some people found this to be helpful. (THIS IS NOT MY VIDEO NOR HAVE I TRIED IT YET) but I have heard it works

Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sxtCFr_bWc

Edited December 19, 2013 by erocean

[h3retic 224]

ye i applied some tweaks as well (good old arma 2 tweeks).

but anyways, its all Real Virtuality's cpu bottlenecking aspect that causes poor performance.

good thing dayz and arma are both amazing games so u just cant stop playing them no matter what

[erocean 21]

no lies there.... hard to stop any of them :D