A couple of months ago I discovered Arma2 and was very impressed with the game play and the incredible attention to detail which up till now I had not seen or for that matter experienced in any of the FPS type games that I had played on my computer. To say that I was intrigued is an understatement, I was getting sweaty palms and elevated heart beat just watching the live stream and YouTube game play.
Then I stumbled on the DayZ game mod for ARMA2. I found this mod to the game to be even more interesting since you are now forced to survive in a post apocalypse environment with zombies and other players that may or may not be friendly. From the various videos and live streaming I have watched of the game play it seems that almost everyone is a dick when it comes to surviving even in a digital world.
I was not sure if my computer would support the game but found that was not an issue after installing the free version of Arma2 and running it successfully. I then leveled up and purchased the download for both Arma2 and Arma2 Operation Arrowhead. Arma2 OA is necessary if you are to play the DayZ mod and I went one step further and picked up the Private Military Company and British Armed Forces packages to make sure I had access to all of the weapons and equipment found in DayZ, all this by going to GameStop here in Silverdale to physically purchase the download content activation codes. Then it was back to the house, go on-line to the GameStop page and download the games.
Once I had the installation all sorted out I was ready to test my mettle against the zombie hordes. Well that was a very painful first time experience. My first foray into DayZ was disastrous, I think I was active as a survivor for all of a few seconds before getting the life kicked out of me by a group of very angry zombies. The second or third attempts had me surviving for a little while longer but complications brought on by time lag between the controls and actual events on screen had me falling off of buildings or actually passing through walls to fall to the street below. This was definitely not the gaming experience I was hoping for. Add to that the failure to actually realize that the server I had joined was not supporting certain settings that enhance your ability to survive such as the third person view that are really necessary if you are to get an edge over the opposition and help you survive. Without this feature you are forced into tunnel vision and can only see what is directly in front of you. Peripheral vision is not an option so you have to actually turn your head to see in another direction. That really limits your combat and survivor effectiveness and makes you a statistic much quicker
I had to take a look at what I was doing wrong and got the server settings sorted out so that I was not joining a server with all of the restrictions that I had experienced. It was by accident that I found a private hive that actually loaded you up with night vision, L85 AWS (fitted with thermal sight), M9 Beretta with silencer, and a few other odds and ends so that you could go forth, survive, forage, and defend yourself right from the start. I thought this was a great situation until I had to use the L85 AWS the first time and found that your sight picture was not ideal, you had to have the thing pointed in the right direction in order to get you field of view to even show you a warm body and when that body was moving at short range it just as quickly disappeared from your field of view. Frustrating? You bet! Especially when it comes to warding off angry zombies at close range. I also discovered that applying a double tap to a zombie does nothing for their disposition. You just anger them more and the end result is blunt force trauma and you end up getting killed. So shooting zombies at close range can be a bit of a problem since it will take five or six rounds to drop them and you only have sixty rounds of 9mm available in four magazines. Best bet is to just avoid them if possible.
The learning process is a bit of a struggle since you never actually enter the game at the same location so you could end up in the extremes where nothing exists or near a town with plenty of resources to harvest as you try to avoid the zombie hordes. So after learning a bit more, I have actually managed to survive a bit longer but have lost a bit of blood and can not see quite fully in color any longer. I have yet to find another survivor that is necessary if you are to regain your blood levels by transfusion so for now I am laying low and venturing only short distances from my hide to forage in a group of apartment buildings and a hospital for pain killers and food.
I thought that by going in during the early morning hours that there would be an advantage to using the night vision device but I am starting to think that zombies have night vision or worse, they can actually smell me. Some times I can hide by going prone and they walk right by and at other times that just allows them to stomp on me that much faster. It is a crap shoot and you learn that it is best to not pick a fight with a zombie as it just invites more of his buddies to join in the fun and you become a statistic that much faster.
Strangely enough, there are no female zombies in the game, not that I would really want to encounter a female zombie but it is odd that they are not included since there is an option for a female survivor player.
When Trumpeter came out with the PMC figure sets I was stumped at what could be done with them. The player avatars in the DayZ mod remind me a lot of the Trumpeter PMC figures and the executive figure in the one set could have been used as a model for one of the zombies that strolls around in an MIB styled suit. All of the player avatars are wearing pretty much the same type of clothing and you have options to upgrade to different types of rucksacks to increase your on-person carry capacity of necessary things like food, water, camping accessories, and ammunition for the weapons you are using.
I am still hoping to venture further inland to some of the other locations that have a lot of military equipment to loot and possibly some vehicles that you can actually drive around in the game like the Ural 4320 series cargo truck (you can carry a lot of stuff in the back of that truck), there are also UAZ series utility vehicles, Toyota Hi-Lux 4Pax 4X4 trucks, and some unique little European vehicles that I am not very familiar with but I suspect that in the former East Block these were quite common. The largest weapon so far available in the DayZ mod is a .50 anti-material rifle called the AS50 or the Barrett M107/M82. There are M16/AR-15 weapons with the M203 40mm grenade launcher but sourcing ammunition for the GL will compete for space on your player so for every round of M203 ammuntion you lose a magazine of ammunition for your weapon. Tough choice but that could be less of a problem if you find a vehicle to carry all of your battle rattle with you.
There is another mod for Arma 2 called Wasteland that has no zombie threat but instead you have Blue Forces, Red Forces, and Independent Forces as your choices when you join the fight. This mod has a lot of vehicles including the Stryker MGS and M113 that I have seen in addition to the M923 series 5t truck and the other vehicles I already mentioned. There are also aircraft in the game that can be flown such as the Mi-8/Mi-17 Hip, UH-1, An-2, C-130, and one other helicopter gunship that I do not recall the name of. Certainly a lot of interesting things in one game that requires you to join up and become part of a team in order to succeed.
Links:
Wikipedia - Arma2Armaholic (all things related to Arma2)Arma2 FreeArma2[Arma2] DayZ ModDayZDB - DayZ Mod Data Base DayZ WikiWikipedia - DayZ***edit to make spelling corrections