Guns are a constant character in modern games, but we don't typically take the time to deconstruct their personalities. How a gun animates, its behavior, and what we hear in our headphones has a lot to do with how much we enjoy a shooter. In service of highlighting some of the best examples of good design, Evan, Logan, and T.J. sat in front of a camera to talk about which game guns they like the most.

The six or seven guns we mention are a sliver of PC gaming's armory, of course. What rifles, blasters, launchers, or cannons would you contribute to the discussion?

When the Patch Notes Fairy visits, she often provides precious accidental humor. The Sims 3 has consistently delivered this (version 1.4, from 2009: “Sims can no longer 'Try for Baby' with the Grim Reaper”), but today’s DayZ patch notes produced a few incidental laughs at the PC Gamer office. In addition to adding complexity to DayZ’s infection system, 1.7.5.1 includes gems like “Cutting down trees now attracts zeds,” a change that may endanger the livelihoods of apocalyptic lumberjacks everywhere.

Really, though, this is a great-looking and fairly comprehensive update. There’s new content, new or modified mechanics in play, and fixes to long-standing issues. All of these only affect the mod version of the game, but some of the improvements made may creep into the retail version.

A notable adjustment is that—if I’m interpreting it correctly—all weapons will now spawn with a limited amount of ammunition when you find them, slightly mitigating the tedious hunt for ammo players often have to perform after finding a weapon. A handful of new guns and vehicles are in, including variants of the Sa-58 and G36 assault rifles, pulled from Operation Arrowhead. ATV riders will be happy to know that the vehicles can now be set back on their wheels if you’ve ever (as I did in our weekend Arma 2 event) flipped one of the four-wheelers while cresting a hill at full throttle.

The Sa-58P (top) and G36K.

Eating and drinking has also gotten more dangerous, because DayZ. Animals no longer give the same generic “raw meat” item when butchered, and you can also eat uncooked animal meat, though it restores less blood and has the chance of giving you an infection. (And hmm, I wonder what the food item labeled "HIDDEN" refers to?) Drinking water will also need to be boiled to eliminate the possibility of contracting an infection. Also under the umbrella of "unsafe liquids," blood transfusions—the quickest way of restoring life—now have a chance to cause infection.

A run-down of the dozens of fixes, updates, and new stuff is up on the DayZ forums. If you’re looking to play the mod for the first time, DayZ Commander is the best current auto-updater utility.

Bohemia Interactive are renaming the main island of Arma 3 to Altis. According to their press release, Bohemia hope that the new name will reflect the Mediterranean identity of the island, but, "distinguishes it from the real-world Greek island of Lemnos, which has served as the main source of inspiration."

"In view of recent events, the team no longer feels passionate about using the previous name, 'Limnos', and hopes that the new identity, ‘Altis’, will help emphasize the fictional nature of the game." Those recent events, of course, being the 129 day detainment of Bohemia employees Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar, now released on bail.

"As part of the creative process, our virtual environments are often rooted in real-life locations and, during development, they evolve and grow along with our design," said Arma 3 project lead Joris-Jan van 't Land. "The resulting fictional environment is often close to its inspiration, but it's never exactly the same - nor would we want it to be. For us, 'Altis' echoes the Mediterranean heart of our island, but differentiates it from any undesired real-life connotations."

Atlis is a 350 kilometre square island, inspired by Greece's Lemnos. Bohemia stress that it was created based on publicly or commercially available data. Arma 3 will also feature a smaller second island, Stratis (approx. 20 km²), which will keep its name.

DayZ creator Dean "Rocket" Hall has shared his reaction with Eurogamer over the DayZ Origins mod for Arma 2 and its "inspiration" from Rocket's original zombie-survival creation. Though calling the naming similarities between the two mods "a bit problematic," he commended the GamersPlatoon community for "some awesome ideas."

"It would seem a shame to destroy that kind of creativity by me getting upset about the name," Rocket said. "So my thoughts for the moment are really, 'Wow, that's cool,' and then, 'Aww shucks, there go my DayZ: Origins plans!'"

Rocket's current focus surrounds the shaping of the standalone version of DayZ, but he admitted Origins threw a rusted wrench into plans to use the name for a possible spin-off project. "And now, if I were to do what I was planning, then it would forever get confused with ," he added. "But you can't encourage creativity on one hand and beat it with a stick with another."

We've got more info and even a download link for DayZ Origins if you're seeking an immediate survivalist fix (no, not that one). As for Rocket's standalone, the most recent development update went over interesting topics such as weather effects and diseased clothing.

The War Z may have ended up a rushed mess of a game, but people looking for DayZ style zombie survival action (yet inexplicably unwilling to just play DayZ) could now have a new title to try. Despite the name, DayZ Origins has nothing to do with Dean "Rocket" Hall's original, but instead is an Arma 2 mod "inspired" by DayZ. It also claims to give an ultimate end goal to the game of running around an open world, trying not to be eaten by the dead.

DayZ Origins runs on an adapted version of the Taviana community map. It features a remote island called Survival City, where rich survivors have built a safe haven protected by walls and elite mercenaries. According to the game's description, "if you manage to get in, you will have a chance at grabbing some of their finest weaponry and supplies."

Also included is "Patient Zero", a mutated super zombie, and the likely origin of the outbreak. "Capturing/killing this zombie might have the cure for the zombie infection."

Other features include ramshackle survivor-made vehicles - a counterpoint to DayZ's military hardware - that look like something cobbled together in Gary's Mod, as well as persistent levelling and lots of new building interiors to scavenge.

Here's a teaser trailer:



It looks like an impressive undertaking, and the need to team-up to assault Survivor City could be an elegant way of encouraging co-operation over a shoot-on-sight lone wolf attitude. Still, I'm not sure about the name. Piggybacking off of DayZ's success seems cheap, especially after the confusion caused by the similarities between War Z and DayZ. Sure enough, the YouTube comments page already contains people asking if this is DayZ Standalone, which can only exacerbate the problem.

You can download DayZ Origins here. More screenshots below.

The War Z's mindless unpeople are only dangerous in large numbers. Hackers and spawn campers are the real threat.

I can see the benefits to having an identical twin. I mean, being followed around by someone that shares all your genetic traits must be like having a constant, you-shaped reminder to distinguish yourself. It’d probably make you a better person.

When The War Z revealed itself last July, jumping into DayZ’s still-fresh footsteps, the hope—mine, at least—was that the games’ doppelgangering designs would drive a mutual ambition between them. One that gamers would benefit from. Both Zs throw you into a vast, brutal sandbox filled with players and zombies. Both scatter a mix of boring and military items within their worlds, and make scavenging for food as necessary as bullets.

Hammerpoint Interactive wanted The War Z to be a more accessible mutation of DayZ’s ideals, ones rooted in military simulation Arma 2. I think there’s more than enough room for a game of that nature to exist. The problem was Hammerpoint’s recklessly fast pace of development. Four months after being announced, they committed to a pre-release around Halloween, all while promising an impossible-sounding feature set: maps up to 400km² in area, vehicles, bounty-setting, traps, player-owned private instances, and 250-player servers.

All of these features are still to be delivered. The game that exists now, version 1.0.1, is a shell of its own dubious intentions still waiting to be filled. In its haste to release ahead of DayZ’s updated, standalone version, The War Z duplicates most of its step-brother’s problems instead of addressing them.

Hackers still linger, ready to ruin your progress, and their exploits are exponentially less tolerable in a context where dying loses you the hard-earned gear you’re carrying. Server-hopping remains a relatively easy method of item farming. The War Z has its own, original issues too: cheap and inconsistent sound design deflates the game’s mood; the entire melee system feels like a placeholder; and bullets—one of The War Z’s most precious resources—can be bought with real money.

You know those blow-up punching bags for kids? That's what The War Z's melee system seems to be modeled after. Zombies root to their position when you hit them. As long as you're dealing with one or two targets, you won't take damage.

It’s a game that openly lacks DayZ’s experimental spirit, and yet, there are tiny glimmers—beams of light that occasionally pierce through the rubble of technical and design problems that The War Z buries you under. These moments of self-authored apoca-storytelling are rare, but here’s one.

I’m in a police station at dusk when I hear footsteps punctuating mine. I freeze, stowing my flashlight. I hide in the back room, hoping whoever else is in here doesn’t scan every corner. The footsteps get louder. Now, two glaring flashlights are upon me, occluding their owners. I don’t move. They don’t move. I breathe through my teeth. They’re two hovering lights, staring at me like curious aliens. I’m sure I’m about to be bludgeoned to death.

I sprint through them, booking it past dumpsters behind the station. I curl around a fence. Their lights chase inquisitively, but they seem to lose interest. I exhale, loop around, and perch up on the outskirts of town to watch them. I wait. And wait. And within three minutes, there’s a bandit in the street, emptying an AK-47 into the building that the pair of survivors wandered into. I ride a wave of giddy schadenfreude out of town.

On the surface, this is the same family of feelings I experience in DayZ. What I did in a moment of panic—how I problem-solved and reacted—created a small narrative. But anecdotes like this are rare accidents among a heap of damaged systems. As long as The War Z lacks its own identity, a clear vision of what it can offer the genre, a responsible approach to microtransactions, or a proper implementation of its own ideas, it won’t be worth playing.

The War Z claims to have a 100km² map, but you'll regularly spawn in the same spot as other survivors. This fellow instantly  killed me, probably because we were wearing the same outfit.

There’s a huge obstacle to The War Z overcoming the frustrating mess I’ve played for the past two months: the absence of voice communication. Even more than competitive shooters, multiplayer survival games rely on integrated voice to facilitate interesting, coincidental experiences between faceless strangers. It’s an essential social tool, and one that can defuse the natural tension that spikes when you and another survivor come face to face in a barn, an abandoned post office, the woods—wherever.

A non-functional slider for adjusting communication volume implies that some form of voice is coming, but in the meantime The War Z’s proximity text chat forces you to pull your hands off your mouse and WASD to type, leaving you defenseless. It’s unforgivable that Hammerpoint is willing to sell The War Z in this state. The UI element that displays global, clan, and proximity text is a clumsy, immersion-breaking container, too: unless you hit F12 to disable the whole HUD, enjoy watching a steady tick of chat room gossip that you can’t turn off individually.

I wish that the only audio sins committed by The War Z were against your microphone. They’re not, though. Every sound feels homemade in the worst way, or pulled from some public audio library. Whatever virus afflicts the zombies has given them the gentle feet of fairies—other than their grunts, zeds are completely inaudible when moving. In most situations, players don’t make footstep noise either: they’re inexplicably silent on dirt, dense grass, urban outdoor areas, and pavement, except when sprinting (and even then, whisper quiet). But you will hear the clanking, oddly metallic thud of human feet when you or another survivor are moving on indoor surfaces or say, an empty shipping container.

Don’t interpret this as an objection to The War Z’s loose realism. Audio is just one of the many hollow bones in the game’s skeleton, but it happens to be a particularly brittle one. Not being able to hear zombie or player movement makes detecting threats frustratingly difficult and eliminates any possibility of listening being a fun skill, as it is in Counter-Strike, for example. Sound directionality is also an issue, with zombie howls and other effects never quite deciding which side of your headset they belong in. Perhaps worst is the hackneyed horror movie trick the game relies on: telling you how to feel with scary noises.

The sourceless, ominous bonging of a church clock. A haunted airplane hum that steadily rises in pitch. These are the grating, ambient noises you’ll be subjected to every few minutes—and no, they cannot be turned down or off. Why rely on such fake stimulation? The threat of permadeath (on Hardcore mode) or an hour timeout (on Normal), and the loss of your gear in both, are natural fear-inducers. If anything, the inclusion of these bizarre effects betrays how little confidence Hammerpoint has in the game’s inherent ability to spook you.

Military gear, groceries, backpacks, and medical supplies make up most of The War Z's loot.

If part of Hammerpoint’s goal is to create a game that’s more accessible than DayZ, there are a few ways they’ve been relatively successful. Character movement is as effortless as any other average third-person shooter (The War Z allows first- and third-person perspective swapping), and I like that sprinting stamina is a player resource that depletes and fills. The map has some interesting landmarks, including a ski resort lodge, a snapped freeway overpass beside a dense city, and some modest military installations. The War Z also addresses one of DayZ’s defects by making more of its structures enterable, although I’ve built sand castles that are more geometrically diverse.

I don’t like how homogenous the landscape is, though. The level designers treat the Colorado forest simply as dull, wooded filler between points of interest, demonstrated by the ancient texture quality trees and shrubbery are drawn with. Overall, War Z hands you an incongruous but more functional world, while DayZ’s current main map Chernarus has heaps more personality and authenticity. Being satellite-modeled after a slice of the Czech Republic probably doesn’t hurt.

In terms of features, one I like is War Z’s global inventory system. Any items you’re carrying can be deposited to a secure inventory for later use, or to be given to other characters on your account. You can only transfer gear while you’re inside one of the map’s three designated safe zones—protected areas of the map where players can’t shoot, use melee weapons, or take damage. I like the way the shared inventory provides something to do beyond hunting other players. Reaching a safe zone and banking a rifle, some ammo, or some body armor for a new character feels like reaching a finish line. It also makes low-end loot slightly more valuable, as junk like juice boxes, binoculars, or bandages can be used to boost revived characters when you inevitably die.

This feature, of course, is in place in part to give The War Z’s item marketplace a reason to exist. Other than guns, almost all loot can be purchased in the game with real money or a large amount of in-game currency (zombies will sometimes drop enormous piles of paper cash when killed).

I don’t have a huge objection to selling some basic items: it’s a mostly-harmless shortcut for players who hate grinding for staples. But it’s unsettling that Hammerpoint is happy to put on sale stuff like the largest backpack in the game, nightvision goggles and weapon scopes. These are significant tiers of progression that you can simply pay to reach, and pricetagging this gear undermines the significance of finding it in the wild.

But wait: it gets worse. The War Z’s marketplace sells the same bullets you can find in-game, and they’re only buyable with real money. How much does virtual ammo cost? Well, a 30-round STANAG magazine is about $0.32. A 10-round .22 mag is $1.24—more than $0.12 per shot. Five rounds for the .50 caliber anti-materiel sniper rifle will set you back a ludicrous $3.60.

That’s as expensive as it gets, probably because any further irresponsible mark-up would rival the cost of actual ammo. I usually shrug off claims that a game is “pay to win” as wild overstatements, but selling bullets—a legitimate form of power—is such a positively stupid, egregious thing. It sells out the very theme of the game. In firefights, it detracts from the mindset of needing to be hyperconscious of your ammo consumption, or the feeling that you’re fighting an enemy who’s similarly underequipped. I like scarcity in apocalyptic shooters; saving your precious flamethrower ammo in Fallout 3 until a boss fight made that encounter so much more meaningful. I can’t believe the extent that Hammerpoint is willing to put a price on that feeling.

The War Z's real money currency, Gold Coins, can be used to buy a vast amount of equipment, allowing players to sidestep the effort of finding it in-game.

I wish I could better evaluate the level of hacking in The War Z. On January 16, Hammerpoint claims that it has banned 3.5 per cent of its playerbase for hacking, and the forum dedicated to cheating complaints totals more than 9,100 posts. In a dedicated post with more than 14,000 views, loads of players report being killed inside safe zones. That’s unacceptably bad, although it didn’t happen to me.

Anecdotally, I’ve been killed by hackers two or three times in 60-plus deaths. Compared with Bohemia’s game, I’m relatively happy: I haven’t had to watch helplessly as all the players on a server were teleported into the ocean or into a pile of bear traps, as I did in DayZ. Hackers remain an issue but one I’ve experienced less in The War Z. Hopefully things will get better, not worse, if the game sees an influx of players when it re-releases on Steam.

The behavior of legitimate players has actually been a bigger problem. Despite the size of the world, spawn camping is a constant fear in The War Z. Spawn locations for new characters are predetermined, and it’s normal for these areas to be watched—even on low-population servers, I’ve found. I’ve been killed before the game completes loading (off my SSD, no less), with no chance to move or respond, 14 times. On several of these defenseless lives, I’d brought gear into the game that I’d purchased from the marketplace and lost it instantly.

The War Z’s recent attempt to address server hopping actually exacerbates this. Initially (as I complained about earlier this month) players could leave and join servers with no penalty, logging and out of high-volume loot areas to farm items. On January 23, Hammerpoint attempted to solve this by teleporting any players that leave a server and log into a new one to a nearby location. On paper, this seemed like a reasonable stop-gap. In practice, unfortunately, the locations the game teleports you to seem to be shared with the spawn spots available to new players, which simply adds to the traffic of fresh bodies for bandits to execute.

Time passes with an accelerated day-night cycle.

Hammerpoint’s hurry to sell something so openly unfinished is irresponsible. The studio has a pile of technical, design, and exploit-related flaws to address before it should even consider implementing the long list of originally promised (and then omitted) features.

And there are lots of these. Colorado’s open roadways are empty of vehicles. Strongholds—small, rentable, server instances—aren’t implemented. Bodies of water aren’t swimmable, and are blocked off with invisible walls. You earn XP by killing zombies, but the skill system for spending it hasn’t been added yet. Players can’t yet offer missions to other players for rewards, a feature that would formalize bounty-setting within The War Z.

With a dozen more months of effort, I think The War Z could’ve contributed something good to the survival genre. Its accomplishments include a comfortable inventory system, smoother player movement than a famously rigid military sim, and more building interiors. Other than that, it’s simply a reminder of how unflattering imitation can be, and that multiplayer survival games are inherently difficult to make.

Dean "Rocket" Hall has posted another development update on the status of the DayZ Standalone release, and by the sound of things, the team have been busy. "This is the first update when I have sat down and thought 'where do I start?' There has been so much going on with the development this month that it is hard to fit it all in a post here."

Fit it in he has, though, and the resulting post contains information on everything from volumetric clouds to diseased clothing. There's also a giant comparison shot of the game's new lighting system. "The result is pretty striking when combined with some of the other improvements we have made in the engine," Hall writes. "These improvements make the world really come to life, improving the visuals overall."



Rocket also talks about the game's new server architecture, assuring that the game will have some anti-hacking mechanics on launch. "DayZ’s game servers will function like servers in other MMO style games, that is the server will control the behavior and the sending of updates. No longer will your machine receive all the updates allowing their analysis by various cheats." The team are also experimenting with spawning all zombies and loot at the start of a server's initialisation.

There's a new clothing system, allowing you to put on and drop clothes of various durability. Clothes can also carry disease. In addition, the team are beginning to focus on a character customisation system. "The obvious starting point for us is to allow players to select the gender and race of their character. Beyond this, allowing ways for your character to become your own are key for us; from getting tattoo’s to finding unique clothing items, trying to deal with your own health aliments, etc..."

Rocket confirms that an internal closed test has begun, but stresses that the server architecture needs to be finalised before any public testing takes place. " have been working with Valve to ensure our new server browser system is working (we utilize Steam for this purpose rather than Gamespy as for ArmA2)."

Despite the progress, Rocket isn't yet prepared to make a guess at DayZ Standalone's release date. "We don’t know. We’re going to take our time. I feel fantastic about the situation, more than ever I feel like we’re doing something really interesting with this development. Now is not the time to rush things, but we do need to ensure our pace is kept up."

There are some new screenshots, embedded below. You can see the rest, and read the full details of the massive update, here.

Are hard-as-hell indie games enough to satiate our hunger for a challenge, or should mainstream developers quit trying to appease everyone and start really testing us? In this Face Off from our archives (originally published October 2012), Executive Editor Evan Lahti gives former Senior Editor Josh Augustine a hard time for his willingness to take it easy.

Make your own arguments in the comments—debate team captains: it’s your time to shine.

Evan: Focus testing is the enemy of experimentation and innovation. It widens the audience of a game by watering down the experience. Portal was harder, and better, than Portal 2, which forewent feats like mid-air maneuvering almost completely. Skyrim gave us a detailed wilderness where falling into a freezing lake meant nothing and dragons weren't much more than giant mosquitoes. Remember what dying was like in Diablo and Diablo II? You had to bravely fight back to your corpse to recover your gear with whatever rented junk you could pull together. I miss that brutality, and the feeling of, y’know, actually losing something.

Josh: And Diablo III offers that: in Inferno and Hell difficulty. Either of which can be played with permadeath on. Knock yourself out.

Evan: I’d love to, but Blizzard insists that I can only earn the right to play on a difficulty that can actually kill me by spending hours churning through Children’s Mode, erm, Normal. For every new character.

Josh: So you’re asking to die more? Dying isn't inherently fun or interesting. It’s not the secret sauce of game design. Even if games are a little less hard, it’s only because we’ve grown out of the binary win/lose states of the ’80s and ’90s. Those were motivated by a desire either to get people to put in more coins or to artificially lengthen 8- and 16-bit games that were otherwise short and simple. We’re in an age of gaming diversity and accessibility. More people are playing games; that’s great.

Evan: It’s not about dying more. It’s about wanting game design that uses difficulty creatively. Look at DayZ: you spawn in a 225km2 world with no weapon, no map, and no compass. You have to eat and drink. Everything is trying to kill you, and death is permanent. Almost every weapon has discrete ammo. If I’m good enough, I can read the stars to find my way.

It’s completely brutal, but more than 400,000 people flocked to it in just a couple months. It’s led Arma 2 to the top of the Steam sales charts for almost as long. Why? Because it does something so few modern games do: it respects your ability to figure it out yourself.

Josh: Difficulty’s out there if you want it. Super Meat Boy, Dustforce, Dungeons of Dredmor, Legend of Grimrock, Amnesia, Mount & Blade... all of these games are variously unforgiving. Dark Souls’ PC release is called the “Prepare To Die Edition.” Dota 2 and League of Legends are making judgmental, complex multiplayer games mainstream again. In Tribes: Ascend, I have to make mid-air skillshots at 225km an hour. What more do you want?

Evan: All the games you mentioned are from independent studios. They’re from the fringes. No one in the mainstream is embracing consequence-driven gaming, and as long as that’s the case, I think game design will continue to stagnate. I’m bored of regenerating health and checkpoints. And MMOs, honestly, they’re some of the greatest offenders of this because they were born from a model where players were paying an additional fee. Almost all of their design is based around appeasement. There’s no concept of failure or loss or struggle built into them. Every victory is just an eventuality: if you grind or pay enough, you’ll get what you want.

Josh: Even if what you were saying wasn’t a complete generalization (have you played TERA or Rift or DC Universe Online? They’re all totally tough)—a lot of people relish the social freedom and friendly atmosphere that MMOs provide by not punishing you dramatically just because you aggroed one too many cave goblins, or whatever. Difficulty isn't some one-setting-suits-all concept.

Evan: Challenge counts, and modern games are missing it. Without it, we’re just passively consuming content, going through the motions, acting out a puppet show of animations, particle effects, and sound. Even with immediate access to YouTube walkthroughs the moment a game is released, most developers are still desperately afraid of upsetting players or scaring them away. When I play something like DayZ, I feel feelings. My pulse changes. I regret decisions. I get mad. That’s valuable.

Josh: Well, while you’re getting mad that games don’t make you mad enough, I’ll be having fun.

We're a day away from The War Z's one-month anniversary of being removed from Steam. Throughout this time, it's been buyable and playable through The War Z's website. For several weeks, developer Hammerpoint Interactive has considered it fit enough to be labeled as version 1.0.

I'm in the process of playing The War Z for our review, but for now, I wanted to take a moment to point out a couple reasons why The War Z isn't a game that's worth your time, and certainly one that doesn't deserve to know your credit card information.

In the video, I mention Hammerpoint Interactive's just-published plan for addressing server hopping as an issue. You can read notes for next week's patch on the War Z forums.

Follow Evan and PC Gamer on Twitter.

Martin Pezlar (left), an artist at Bohemia and Ivan Buchta, Arma 3 Creative Director. Photo courtesy of Dean Hall.

Bohemia Interactive developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar, both of who were detained and jailed in Greece for nearly four months on charges of espionage, have returned to the Czech Republic today after posting a €5,000 bail ($6,672).

Despite the bail's allowance of traveling home for both men, the charges levied by the Greek government—which claim Buchta and Pezlar spied after they recorded footage of military facilities on the island of Lemnos—still stand, with a court date to be determined at the conclusion of the ongoing judicial strike. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and Czech Republic Prime Minister Petr Nečas apparently negotiated a bail agreement after Buchta and Pezlar were denied appeal in November.

The community-led support site helpivanmartin.org posted a series of videos and snapshots showing a visibly smiling Buchta and Pezlar reuniting with family members and loved ones. In the past, the website's organizers has produced translations of Czech news coverage, which we hope will arrive later on. For now, here's a sample clip of the reception. Head over to helpivanmartin.org for more videos.