Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, it's not just one game under the microscope, but our first random grab-bag of stuff that's fun, but not necessarily enough to justify a full write-up of their own.

Writing this column every week, it's not hard to find obscure and interesting games. Often though, things get put on the back-burner for various reasons - usually that while there's something neat about the game, the interesting bit is fairly simple. Weird action games especially tend to be pretty easily summed up, at least unless you're planning to make one of those angry review shows on YouTube and need to complain about things that wouldn't be a problem if you'd actually read the manual. Ahem.

This week then, we're going to speed through some of the games that didn't make it, quickfire style - a few one-shot oddities, with no connection save them all being amusing. Let's dive in!

Historians now know the horns on Viking helmets were a myth. The teddy bears on their ships remain unconfirmed.

Heimdall for example, a rare example of a game whose character creation was much more iconic and interesting than the actual game, even at the time. The actual game was a badly designed isometric RPG with a penchant for deathtraps - and while there was a sequel that followed it up, neither particularly warrant any lingering nostalgia these days. If you're going to play an old game using these characters, try God Of Thunder - a cute little Zelda style shareware game that never got much attention back in the day, but is much more memorable than anything in Heimdall. Except perhaps for this bit!

Note the 'Oops' counter at the back there.

This is actually part of the character creation system - three minigames you played that determined your starting situation. Many games have experimented with different ways, like random chance, point buy, and Ultima asking morality questions. Heimdall opted for the oddly never-again-used 'throw axes at an understandably nervous girl's hair' approach. Beats rolling dice for charisma points...

Now, obviously, you'd never even dream of hurling one straight into her face to see what happened. In the interests of Science though, the answer is that she ducks out of the way - not being quite as trapped in that pillory as she looks. Also, those braids are falsies, presumably because there are only so many Viking maidens around willing to risk not being fast enough at getting out of the way.

From there, you went on to two more sub-games - catching a greased pig and fighting aboard a boat - but it was this first one that stuck in the mind for fairly obvious reasons. With stats set, it was then time to head off for adventure. We however are not following that journey, because it's dull.

Instead, here's the old RPG Eye Of The Beholder 3 inventing the Goatse.

Now that's the worst kind of lich-in-anus.

What could be less sexy than that? Well, let's try an experiment. Imagine you were writing a text adventure about a trip to a brothel, but wanted to kill the erection - this being 1983, we can take it as read that no lady-equivalent was under consideration - of anyone who came across it. Can you think of a better way than calling it Granny's Place? Rhetorical question. The answer is no.

The guy missed twice with his switchblade? Must be embarrassing going to pick it up.

"You are about to visit Granny's Place, a pleasant little house where a man with time on his hands and a pair of tight balls can go to loosen up," says the intro, before dropping you off in front of a small white house that, like its Zork equivalent, wastes little time having you head down a tight passage into a mysterious cave. Ha. No, seriously. This was 1983. This game is milder than milk. It's probably even milder than the Strip Poker game that casual gaming superstars PopCap were making before changing their name from "Sexy Action Cool" and making a fortune with games like Bejewelled instead.

What's that? You think I'm joking? Nope...

Now that's a very different kind of Hidden Object Game, ma'am.

But I digress, which beats having to undress.

What's strange though about Granny's Place that it actually is a Zork rip-off, only with the promise of hookers instead of just frotzing yourself into a frenzy. As you step up to the house, you find a flashlight - which seems a little odd. Going inside though explains everything. As you probably know, the Zork games had a monster called 'grues' - as in "it is dark, you are likely to be eaten by a grue.' In Granny's Place, that becomes "It is now pitch dark. If you go on, a hitman may find you."

I've never been to a brothel, so maybe people who visit them like the danger of knowing they can be killed at any second, but this seems like a somewhat short-sighted way to do business and build repeat custom. And it's not simply a joke either. Go wandering around in the dark, and:

"A pair of gloved hands suddenly grab you by the throat! You struggle, but can't get free..."

If you turn on the flashlight though, inside you meet a bouncer with a walrus moustache, who doesn't murder you, but does just shrug off the whole point of the game with "The girls is all busy, Mac. Where d'you want to go?" Exploring, you won't find much in the way of sexual bliss, but you will find a little old lady knitting upstairs with a sawed-off shotgun ready to shoot at your head, a man with a fire axe randomly yelling "I'll get you, you sun of a bitch!" before hurling it at your face.

It's at this point that even the horniest sane man will simply take himself elsewhere, and take matters into - ahem - his own hands. There is some sex available in the game though. If you find the maid for example, Fifi, you can type something rude into the parser, and in return, get a moment of sheer eroticism that retroactively demotes Lady Chatterley's Lover back to just Lady Chatterley's Gardener.

"First you do it to her. Then she does it to you. Then you do it to each other. Man, oh man! Every which way but loose!"

Wow. It's just like being there. With Clint Eastwood. And a monkey.

Are you brave enough for bad games, or just feeling a little... chicken?

This is however still sexier than Plumbers Don't Wear Ties - one of the most infamous FMV failures ever. I'm often asked why I've never featured it, and the answer is two-fold - I've never been able to find a copy of the PC version, which scored a frankly generous 3% back in PCG UK Issue 8, and also there's not much to say about it that hasn't already been covered in video reviews like this one.

What is it? Let me start by saying that I really hate it when critics use the word 'lazy' to describe games. To make even a simple game, the most cack-handed tie-in piece of crap imaginable, takes effort, skill, blood, sweat and tears, and it's the height of arrogance to dismiss that while sitting in an ivory tower where all you really have to do is play someone else's hard work and then snark at it.

That being said, Christ, this is a lazy pile of shit - a barely interactive photo story that feels like it was written the night before filming, where 'filming' is means 'shooting some random pictures of a girl in her bra and a plumber who does in fact wear a tie'. It's so lazy, at one point a character fluffs a line and they left it in. Its only redeeming feature... and I've calculated this as the same amount of redemption a serial killer would get for dropping 20p into a charity box... is how surreal it is. The only thing stopping it being in the running for worst commercial game ever created is that it's barely a game.

And also Altered Beast exists.

But hey, don't take my word for it! Thanks to YouTube magic, you can play the entire thing right here. It uses YouTube's hyperlinks, so this probably won't work if you're on a mobile device. Check back with on a desktop though, and here you go. Sorry in advance, and don't expect video past the intro.



Hmmm. That's now two for the guys. Let's balance a little with a rare one for the ladies - an obscure little platformer called The Lost City Of Atlantis. What makes it stand out amongst its brethren?



Yep, it's one of the only non-pornographic games ever made with a completely naked main character, and a male one with a penchant for casual full-frontals at that. Though not impressive ones, we can agree, and the setting rather stops him blaming that fact on the cold. Shrinkage, perhaps.

What does soon become obvious though is that hero Raghim is surrounded by easily grabbable cloth things, and thus the only reason he's bouncing around platforms with "Commander Keen" hanging out is that he wants to. Oddly, despite Lara Croft becoming infamous for a nude code that never actually existed, this didn't help Raghim become an international icon, or get his own pop album full of songs with names like "Getting Naked" and "Feel Myself". Hell, he didn't even get decent controls...

Meanwhile, on a more profitable trail than the one to Oregon...

Here's something completely different though - Gold Rush. It's one of the more forgotten Sierra adventures, and probably for good reason. It's also one of the most confused in design terms, with the first half aiming to be a historical story of a man taking part in the California Gold Rush, and then the second half collapsing into dribbling conspiracy and nonsensical puzzles.

The weirdest bit though is how it handles death. Sierra Online was infamous for death - something known to fans as 'Sierra Sudden Death Syndrome'. There's even a song about it. These games would kill you at the drop of a hat, and that's when they were being generous. They would kill you for not having bought a hat to drop onto an angry crocodile's head in Paris. They would kill you for putting on the hat, because it would have razor blades or something in it. In one of the most infamous examples, Leisure Suit Larry has a puzzle where you have to buy a snack in an airport, but when you try to eat it, you die because there was a pin in it. The only clue was that when you ate it, you died. Restore, Restart, Quit?

You can still buy the game, though it costs $20 for the 'Economy' version and $35 for a 'Collectors' Edition

Gold Rush took this a step further, adding random deaths to the mix. What do I mean? A big chunk of the game is non-interactive, with your character buying passage to the second half of the game by sea or land depending on how much you're willing to spend. If you take, say, the land path, sometimes you'll arrive and just drop dead of cholera. Or you'll be walking through a swamp, when a crocodile just appears and murders you. The reason for this sadism? Because sometimes, shit just happens.

...

Speaking of which, here's the greatest conversation in adventure game history.



I'm also going to bend the rules a little to quickly show this trailer - it's not a PC game, but an adventure for iPad and iPhone. You'll see why I had to link it anyway though, because it's... this.



And I think that'll do it for this first delve into the Quickies pile. Next week, it's back to a single game that warrants the attention, but there's no short of smaller ones that we'll get to later on in the year. I don't want to spoil what they are though, so instead, I'll leave you on a classic musical number from the Sierra catalogue. Laura Bow was a Roberta Williams series (technically - it was only two games and she only made the first) about a 1920s girl with a nose for news and a knack for getting caught up in murders.

The second game, The Dagger of Amon Ra, was one of the earliest 'talkies', made at a time when nobody saw a problem with having developers play most of the parts instead of paying for actors to do it. With the exception of the Tex Murphy crew, this proved to be a Mistake. In this scene, Laura has found her way into the world's least subtle speakeasy, where she catches a little song I guarantee you will never be able to get out of your head. But oh, how you'll try... try and fail so hard...

The first part of an Assassin's Creed III DLC pack exploring an alternate-reality America in which Washington crowns himself king comes out on February 19, Ubisoft announced today. For $10, grizzled assassins can take a break from giving colonists surly looks and chasing after techno-balls for a chance to take on the imperious Founding Father.

In the first episode, named The Infamy, Connor "wakes from an unsettling dream" to come face-to-smirk with a power-mad Washington who ascended the throne with a platform less about liberty and a lot more about "off with his head." The next two parts, The Betrayal and The Redemption, arrive at a later date, and you can bet Connor won't leave his tomahawk un-bloodied before the end.

Have a close look at Washington's royal jewels in the trailer below.

This week in our new competitive gaming column: could PlanetSide 2 be the first competitive shooter to achieve RTS/MOBA-level worldwide success? MLG and Sony think it just might. Plus: Who will secure their spots in Dota 2's The Defense 3 playoffs? This and much more below. gl hf!

PlanetSide 2 + MLG = Profit?
The big news today is that Major League Gaming has partnered with developers Sony Online Entertainment to bring PlanetSide 2 into the eSports spotlight. This is an interesting twist, as nothing on the scale of PlanetSide's continent-spanning warfare, often involving hundreds of soldiers, has been presented in a major, competitive context before now. Shooters in general, actually, tend to struggle in terms of viewership beside the more easily-readable presentation of top-down strategy and MOBA games.

The idea of PlanetSide as an eSport presents a lot of interesting questions. Could we see professional teams with dozens of members, operating under a military command structure? On top of this, MLG has officially announced two games for their Winter 2013 Pro Circuit season: League of Legends and Black Ops 2 (on the 360.) They are being rather mum about the unannounced third game. It seems almost ludicrous that a game with the worldwide popularity of StarCraft could get the boot, but this new partnership with Sony certainly has me wondering if we might be seeing Auraxis in place of Shakuras at the Winter Championship in Dallas this March.

StarCraft 2


IEM Katowice has concluded, with South Korea's First of Incredible Miracle and Dream of Team MVP claiming the first and second spots, respectively. PartinG and Socke secured the 3rd-4th spots. All four of them will get the chance to face off again among the 24 qualified participants at the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship in Germany, starting on March 5. In the GSL, the unsponsored South Korean BBoongBBoong pulled a major Code S upset in group D, defeating StarTale's Squirtle in the winner's match.

Upcoming Events
 
The Iron Squid — Chapter II offline semifinals and finals are set to run this weekend in Paris, France, with a $12,500 top prize. From a bracket practically bursting with fan favorites, only four players remain: MarineKing, Life, NesTea, and DongRaeGu.

Watch it: Ironsquid.tv

Other Stuff
 
I got to sit down for a massive interview with StarCraft II Game Director Dustin Browder last week. Give it a look to find out more about the state of Heart of the Swarm, and what's yet to come.

Day's Funday Monday topic this week: As Terran, you can only build one Factory and one Barracks. Check out some creative Terran air play in the Heart of the Swarm beta.

Axslav has a Rules of Engagement to help you learn how to stay cool and hold the line when you're being attacked from everywhere at once.

League of Legends


Two pro players have been issued lifetime bans for toxic behavior: StunnedandSlayed and Veigodx of Team Solo Mebdi. This effectively disqualified the team from the LCS Qualifiers this weekend.

Upcoming Events
 
Riot's LCS European Qualifiers begin tonight (technically tomorrow) at 1 a.m. PST/4 a.m. EST. For us North Americans, that means some serious caffeine will probably be required to tune in live. There are definitely incentives to do so, however, as we'll get to see the likes of Curse EU and Fnatic compete for five spots in the Season 3 Championships.

Watch it: LeagueofLegends.com

Other Stuff
 

Thresh, the Chain Warden is now available for purchase. He's a support champion with some good tankiness and a focus on positional play.

Dota 2


The active player count in Dota 2 has climbed above three million per month. While still only a fraction of League's numbers, that's pretty impressive for a game that's not even technically released. Team Fnatic has also just announced that their North American team has released four of its five players. According to JoinDota, they hope to build around the remaining member, Johnathan "SMURF" Gorriz.

Upcoming Events
 
The Defense 3 group stage is getting down to the wire. Fnatic.eu has achieved a perfect 7-0 record. The 6-0 Mousesports would need to win their final game in Group A to catch up. Only one team from each group will advance to the playoffs, meaning we'll be seeing a couple of tiebreaker matches. The deadlock will have to be broken between Empire and Dignitas (both 6-1) in Group B. Group C also currently has a tie, as North American Evil Geniuses managed to match Sweden's No Tidehunter in Group C, at 5-2. The winners of these matches will go on to face Mousesports and Fnatic in a double-elimination bracket for the championship.

Watch it: The-Defense.com

Other Stuff
 
The Troll Warlord has just joined the roster of heroes, an Agility monster whose pedigree goes all the way back to the mohawk-sporting troll axe-throwers of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness. His effectiveness up close and at range make him a very flexible carry.

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments what you think of this week's stories, and what eSports events you're most looking forward to in 2013.

gg!

Got eSports? The competitive gaming scene has grown enormously in the last couple years, with PC titles like StarCraft II, League of Legends, and Dota 2 leading the charge. Many of you have probably already joined in the excitement and insanity, but if you haven't, I want to change your mind.

All I ask is that you take a few minutes to watch our latest video, in which I Zerg rush the main reasons I keep hearing for why people haven't gotten into eSports. Too boring? Too complicated? Can't take it seriously? Prepare to defend the worker lines of your brain against some three-pronged drop harass.

Would you sacrifice yourself for victory? It's a dilemma common to story-heavy RPGs and team-based multiplayer shooters, and many players prefer staying alive over flaming out for glory. But in Soulfinity, an action-puzzler in development at Dojo Arcade, offing yourself is the only way to get ahead.

"In order to progress, you must sacrifice yourself which will create a soul that will help you to complete puzzles and defeat enemies," reads Dojo Arcade's description. "Each soul will perform the actions you did before your last sacrifice. Instead of being punished for dying, Soulfinity encourages you to cleverly sacrifice yourself in order to help your future self upon resurrection."

Got that? Good, because things get weirder. You control Odysseus—yes, the mythological Greek king of Ithaca from Homer's Odyssey, who has somehow mastered time as well as death to clash against the Titans in the year 2394 while sporting a glowing blue visor and armor straight out of a Flash Gordon episode to repeatedly kiss the dirt in style.

Soulfinity isn't the first game with puzzles using a clone mechanic—Dojo Arcade cites the browser-based Cursor*10 as a direct inspiration—but generating copies from slicing open your own neck is quite the unique approach. The game doesn't have a solid launch date, but Dojo Arcade hopes for a release sometime this year.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Since the day the first Sims game was launched, virtual architects have been using its built-in construction tools to create exotic and bizarre monuments ranging from heart-shaped islands to a mansion made entirely out of stacked trailer homes. With the same tenacious ambition but with a stated purpose to do "terrible things," Reddit user BourgeoisBanana presented a project earlier this week of a more sensitive nature: the Gaudet Plantation, a lush colonial farmstead complete with slave workers and affluent white owners. But is it actually a terrible thing to explore the darker periods of history?

On a whim, BourgeoisBanana set out to see how closely he could recreate the living conditions of both slave and owner on a plantation. "I'm a large history and architecture buff, and The Sims is a great outlet for both of those, despite getting a lot of flak for being a 'casual' game," he told PC Gamer. "Being British, the colonial era is of particular interest of mine, and after seeing Django Unchained, the idea sort of came to me. I had the day off, so I thought, 'Why not?'"

A small pile of mods were used to design and model both the slave quarters and mansion. The mods set parameters for reflecting the quality of life (or lack thereof) for the slaves, locking them out from the main building and tweaking the AI to stuff in more Sims per house.

"The general layout of the plantation was of my own design, and several people pointed out that it wasn't entirely historically accurate, but given the tools I think I did the best I could," BourgeoisBanana explained. "The house was more or less of my own design too, loosely based off several colonial plantation houses of the era. My main inspiration for the exterior was the plantation house from a level in Hitman: Blood Money. Django Unchained certainly was a great reference too."

BourgeoisBanana recognizes how his creation's stark depiction of racism doesn't exactly mesh with the game's cheerful suburban innocence. He hopes for a future where more games and gamers explore all facets of history, even where doing so may make us uncomfortable. "I believe that to deny our history is to make it repeatable, and discouraging projects such as this one won't prevent racism in the least," he said. "Not only gamers, but all forms of media should definitely get over this politically correct phase we seem to be going through so we can expose the brutality of our past, rather than covering it up and pretending it never happened."

So, is it really a terrible thing? As the plantation's creator touched upon, ignoring our past mistakes with civil rights won't make them simply disappear. Thus, why shouldn't we reconstruct terrible events from history? If not for the goal of sending a message, then just as a way to satisfy curiosity? How would an in-game replication of a slave ship, for example, look like using Minecraft blocks? Let's hear your thoughts in the comments.







Gaudet Plantation mansion 1st floor

Gaudet Plantation mansion attic

Gaudet Plantation mansion ground floor

Gaudet Plantation slave quarters

Blizzard has spoken before on the need to shape up Diablo III's grindy end-game and gear issues. Now, in an official forum thread (via PCGamesN) collating a sizable pile of player concerns and requests, Community Manager Vaneras acknowledged the RPG "needs to be a better game" overall but re-iterated its intention as a sequel with a standalone identity instead of "an HD version of Diablo II."

"A great sequel pays homage to its predecessors and at the same moves forward with new content," Vaneras wrote in a separate post. "It's fairly normal that sequels replace features from predecessors with new features, and I can of course agree that it is an issue if those new features fall short of what is intended.

"All I can say is that we are trying to make Diablo III the best game that it can be, but some things take more time to improve than others," Vaneras continued. "I totally understand if this is hard to accept for some people."

Last week, former Diablo III Director Jay Wilson left to work on other projects at Blizzard. In his farewell message, he commended the team for "making the best decisions we can with the information and knowledge we have at the time" and making "exception efforts" to correct problems.

The player-created list suggests ideas for fixing outstanding issues regarding story, itemization, the lack of PVP, skill trees and attributes, and other topics. Some proposals get quite granular, such as "Sockets that roll as a non-property but an implicit item quality must be brought back" and "Remove those goofy comments from Diablo and Azmodan during acts, revealing tactics and making them sound tryhardish."

It's a comprehensive effort, but what do you think? Do you agree or disagree with the ideas? Would you add anything more that's troubled you since the last time you played?

Earlier this week, a photo ostensibly taken of a crafting screen in Dead Space 3 revealed what appeared to be the option to purchasing crafting resources through microtransactions. In an interview with CVG, Visceral Producer John Calhoun acknowledged the existence of microtransactions in the game, and said the inclusion of a quick-buy option is meant for players who "need instant gratification" instead of procuring materials on their own.

"There’s a lot of players out there, especially players coming from mobile games, who are accustomed to microtransactions," Calhoun explained. "They’re like, 'I need this now, I want this now.' They need instant gratification. So, we included that option in order to attract those players, so that if they’re 5000 Tungsten short of this upgrade, they can have it."

According to Calhoun, traditional Dead Space players used to squishing Necromorph brains under heel for materials won't diminish in importance. "Honestly, most of the dev team are that way; we’re kind of old school, a little bit older," he said. "So, not only are the microtransactions completely optional, but all packs are available to purchase using in-game resources you find."

Calhoun also responded to complaints over the addition of buyable items to the Dead Space franchise, stressing Visceral would "never" incorporate a pay-to-win system. "There are genres of games where that is the answer, and you know what? The world has spoken: they suck," he said. "We don't want to make games that suck, we want to make games that people want to hold on to and to keep on their shelves. That is our mark of success."

Dead Space 3 comes out of the vacuum on February 5. Until then, you can check out our preview, where we descend into the darkness to explore the game's co-op.

WibiData, a startup data applications developer, uses a rather interesting recruitment process: it tasks prospective hires with puzzling out a lost PIN code in a recreation of the company's offices in Portal 2. Yes, that includes hearing modulated insults from a GlaDOS soundalike as you gather reset keys and jump through walls.

Speaking to the New York Times (via VentureBeat), WibiData CEO Christophe Bisciglia said the mod's genesis arose from how Portal 2's layered puzzles "makes me feel like I exercise the same part of my brain that programming and problem-solving does."

Bisciglia commissioned modder Doug Hoogland to design and create WibiData's virtual workspace and the puzzles housed beneath it. Hoogland earned Bisciglia's attention after he fashioned a Portal-ized wedding proposal for an earlier customer, which is both romantically adorable and the best chance to see a murderous computer become a third wheel.

We presume WibiData's employee insurance policy now covers injuries sustained from teleportation ovals and scheming sentient AIs. You can check out the mod for yourself on the company's website.

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.