DayZ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Emily Richardson)

DayZ is a multiplayer zombie survival sim which, though incomplete, produces anecdotes of drama, desperation and clown mask-wearing weirdos. Emily Richardson has been playing it with a question: can you be a good person in the videogame post-apocalypse? Read parts one, two, three.>

On the way back to Elektro we meet two New Spawns on the road. They’re totally bear, in nothing but t-shirts and jeans. They seem to be having a little trouble with a fence, so we puff out our charitable chests and take our opportunity.

Hi there! one of us announces. The pair turn to look at us.

Are you guys thirsty? Hungry? we ask. They say nothing, merely looking at us, a group of about four. We start dropping food and water on the floor for them and I try force feeding one some water from my canteen, but he shuffles awkwardly away to break the animation. (more…)

DayZ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Emily Richardson)

DayZ is a multiplayer zombie survival sim which, though buggy and incomplete, produces anecdotes of drama, desperation and clown mask-wearing weirdos. Emily Richardson has been playing it with a question: can you be a good person in the videogame post-apocalypse? Start with part one.>

We’re a team of four heading straight for the city of Cherno. We have another survivor to pick up and we want to help some people around the town if we can. Yes, by now we realise how dangerous this is. Cherno is not a friendly place and we know that bandits go to find a more challenging kind of prey there, but we’ll be a pack of five soon, and we’re up for the fight. (more…)

DayZ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Emily Richardson)

DayZ is a multiplayer zombie survival sim which, though buggy and incomplete, produces anecdotes of drama, desperation and clown mask-wearing weirdos. Emily Richardson has been playing it with a question: can you be a good person in the videogame post-apocalypse? Read part one here.>

I’ve started a new life in DayZ and I’m determined that this one isn’t going to kill anyone. I’ve already lost all my friends, but I’ve got a lot of food and water from the town of Polana. It’s time to head back to the coast, meet up with some allies and begin my work as a good Samaritan of Chernarus. (more…)

DayZ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Craig Pearson)

How we roll. Of all the things for DayZ to be inspired by, I didn’t think it would be the 1947 song “Buttons and Bows”. But according to zombie master Dean Hall’s RedditAMA, DayZ’s eventual future will include bows, throwable weapons, and more zombies. Bows, people. Bows. Oh, wait. And arrows. That makes more sense. (more…)

DayZ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Duncan Harris)

This is the latest in a series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.>

An irony of Chernarus, the fictional-yet-you-can-somehow-cosplay-there home of DayZ, is that the older the game gets, the younger the map should grow. The awesome ArmA machines for which it was built – planes, helicopters, tanks, boats, guns, the Lada – will fall into disrepair. Some survivors might have the specialist tools to fix them, but more will have the skills to steal them. Those bandits maybe won’t> fix them, and this post-Soviet state will suddenly start to look very pre-Soviet indeed. Though this natural outcome seems unlikely for a mere computer game, it’s what’s so exciting about DayZ being Early Access. We get to watch its apocalypse unfold.

This must be a rather strange prospect for Ivan Buchta, the Bohemia Interactive designer who grew up in the northern area of the Czech Republic the map so closely resembles. To the current DayZ Standalone team he’s the “Ambassador Of The Republic Of Chernarus”, which makes plotting the death of his birthplace an unlikely part of his job description. But then that’s the other thing about DayZ going Early Access: it’s a job he seems to share with just about everyone, from his workmates to the players who think they should ratify the game’s every move. (more…)

DayZ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Emily Richardson)

Hey! Don't kill me.DayZ is a multiplayer zombie survival sim which, though buggy and incomplete, produces anecdotes of drama, desperation and clown mask-wearing weirdos. Emily Richardson has been playing it with a question: can you be a good person in the videogame post-apocalypse?>

I m waiting behind a big green house in the grass, watching the city below me from my little hill. It s my second time in DayZ, the first consisting mostly of finding and eating sardines with my guide, Andy. I m waiting for him to find me when I see a silhouette coming up through the grass toward me, a big M4 rifle pointed at my head.

I yell, Wait, wait, don t do that! and turn and run round the other side of the house. When I turn to look back at him he s stood waving. It s Andy, but as a woman, in different clothes and wielding a weapon I hadn’t ever seen before. He thinks I m an idiot.

I’m so new to this that I feel a lot like the hopeless little kid from The Road and Andy is a bit like my dad, leading me through the world and trying to keep me alive. But not in a weird way, that’s just an analogy. I have no idea what I’m doing, though, or what my course of action is for bashing into other survivors. (more…)

DayZ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Graham Smith)

Doorways: humanity's natural predator.

Is it worth playing DayZ Standalone in its current alpha condition? Probably not. But anecdotes of scary charcoal-eating clowns, wiggle cultists, forced axe fights, and slow death from disease and dehydration, make it hard to resist.

Still I’m a little sad the changelog for the next experimental patch doesn’t contain more basic fixes, like maybe ‘Removed the invisible sodding zombies>‘, or ‘Zombies can no longer run through walls and floors>‘, or even ‘Doorways are now easier to manoeuver through>‘. Instead I have to settle for the likes of “Balanced stomach capacity”, as outlined in a post by Dean Hall over on the official forums. (more…)

DayZ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Nathan Grayson)

Some zombies bite. Others scratch and claw. And this one? Well, she pinches, evidently.

People can finally play DayZ’s standalone alpha en masse, and so they have. As of Bohemia’s last count, the still ultra-buggy alpha had fallen into the ravenous hands of 875,000 players, which totals out to 8,750,000 fingers. Even rockstars who crowdsurf at every> show can’t boast that. Despite that, the newly reborn undead survivor isn’t even close to finished – or out of alpha, for that matter. Keeping in line with the game’s appropriately shambly development cycle, DayZ’s beta> won’t even kick off until the end of 2014. Don’t expect to see this one in any state resembling “finished” for quite some time yet.

(more…)

DayZ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Jim Rossignol)

Plenty of people who were veterans of the original DayZ mod had been wondering whether the magic of the original experience had survived the making of a standalone game. I’m pleased to report that not only has it survived, but there’s new magic, too. Rocket and his team know what they are doing, and the changes they’ve made have created some tense and terrible moments in this new game. The realism it strives for is simultaneously unreal and dark, and creates some of the most awkward and sinister roleplay situations I’ve experienced in any game.

Surviving is back. And it is horribly compelling.

(more…)

Dec 20, 2013
DayZ - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Rich Stanton)

I’m crouching indoors, peeking out of a window at a man in the street. He is carefully searching this row of houses, getting closer and closer, toting an axe and wearing what looks like a clown mask. He’s looking for me. I know this because I said ‘hello’ and there was no response. DayZ is about a zombie outbreak. But there’s a clown at the door, and the undead are nothing next to the living.

Hit the jump.

(more…)

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