Background So I started playing the DayZ Mod sometime at the beginning of Summer 2013, right after they removed the starter pistol. I played the mod for about 6 months in a great clan. We ran our own Lingor server, frequented Namalsk servers, and generally had a very tight well organized group of Anti Bandit players. We played many of the additional flavors that came out including +. When SA was pushed back even further passed the Dec release date the hacking had just become too much that we only felt safe playing on our own server where we had a little bit of damage control. But eventually we got bored. When SA finally released we came back and played rigorously even though SA was a few steps behind the Mod in terms of content and variety. Over the last year I have played SA on and off as the development continues to bring the game in line with Mod features in the SA environment. DayZ is an amazing game and still continues to be a lot of fun.
Feelings on DayZ's competition At first I was not interested in another "DayZ Clone". I skipped the WarZ rush because I knew exactly what it was going to be. I did not fall prey to the hype surrounding Rust or Nether or any of the other DayZ contenders. When my friend brought H1Z1 to my attention last Summer, I laughed at this too. Not only was this being developed by SOE whom I had little faith in as a past SWG fan, I still didn't see any reason as to why I should pay the game any attention.
Why I bought H1Z1 Over the weekend the same friend had decided to buy the game because his work buddies told him how awesome the game was. While I got ready for my Sunday raid I watched him play via the Steam streaming service and again found very little to be desired in the game. Yesterday was his birthday and he said all he wanted to do was game. I had offered to take him out for beers but he declined saying he would rather use his "free night" to play games. So I decided to take the money I would have spent on buying a couple rounds and buy this game to play with him on his birthday game night.
In the Beginning Starting off, the game does not feel any different than DayZ. The interface at first glance is very similar. Movement is very much the same, controls are almost identical. You start off with a few supplies, no weapons, and on a random spot on the map. You have health, hunger, and thirst (all given different names) to maintain. A weapon, food, and something to drink are your first priorities as a fresh spawn. You need to fend off Zombies and watch out for players. I found a online map and loaded it up on my second monitor for navigation. Nothing really new here game play wise, very much like DayZ.
But wait, now this doesn't feel like DayZ anymore As I am making my way through some camp sites and finding the bare essentials, I run across a Map posted to a board. It wasn't a map of the entire zone but a small map of the surrounding area with basically a "you are here" type marking. There was also some other writing saying something about a group of survivors that had headed up North. I wondered if there might be something up there? But in any event I was pleased to be able to figure out my location with relative ease. This was the first sign that this game is going to be different. I still had to maintain my character's status and I still had to fight off zombies, but at least I know where I am and my friends were on their way with a car.
Things I started to noticed as I waited So as I waited for my friends I began looting the houses clustered up on the east side of Pleasant Valley. I had read that PV is a hot zone so I was very careful moving through the buildings. Even though I had to try and be as quiet and stealthy as possible I could not help but feel overwhelmed at each building's potential areas for loot to be found. Moving house to house I would spend 1-2 minutes in each house going through cabinets, refrigerators, bathrooms, armoires, desks, piles of trash in corners, toolboxes. Oh, did I mention that just about every vehicle you find, drivable or not, can be looted? So it began to feel a lot like I was truly scavenging for supplies. I was finding many things I could use, I was finding a lot of things I didn't need. I also found that I could break certain items down for materials. I found it especially helpful I could tear up clothes for cloth to make bandages.
First Crafting Experience As I began collecting materials my friends explained to me how crafting works. They told me I could take my axe to any tree, chop it down, and harvest the wood. I could then craft this wood into a bow and arrows. I started off using the discovery option to learn how to make wood planks, turn them into sticks, and turn them into arrows. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did not remove the materials to learn the recipe. I was even more surprised to find that once I knew how to make arrows, I did not have to make planks then sticks then arrows. I could take a log of wood and tell it to craft arrows and it would go through all the steps creating the planks, sticks, then arrows. I also realized that I could craft what I needed with the materials on the ground. No more inventory shuffling! Needless to say the crafting was fairly initiative and the UI was very easy to use. At this point I was also very low on hydration (thirst). I had found several empty water bottles so far and I know I had seen a stream not far south of my position. I headed down to the water and sure enough I was able to fill the bottles. But the water was dirty and I learned that dirty water not only provides a small amount of hydration it also takes away health points. Since I had collected so many cloth scraps and crafted them into bandages I drank enough dirty water to almost fully hydrate and then bandaged myself backup. I later learned to, my surprise, that I could start a fire with a log obtained from a chopped down tree. Once the fire was lit, thankfully I had a lighter, I could put dirty water bottles in the fire to turn them into Purified Water. Purified Water, as I sure you guessed, provides a huge amount of hydration and does not hurt my health. I would later find that depending on the weather water can also be found in rain catchers, neat!
Zombies Now this is where things really begin to feel different, for me at least. I found that running around houses and building a fire does not go unnoticed. But it wasn't a player or group of players who's attention I caught. To my surprise the Zombies act very much like Zombies you see in the movies and shows. Killing Zombies with a melee weapon is not always the easiest task and I had to use up a lot of bandages. One thing that helps is the ability to push back your attacker and even sometimes knocking them down for a short amount of time. I began a strategy of pushing, swinging, and stepping back from their counter attack. But I was not always successful in dodging. So it became clear that I should just do my best to dodge them when possible. I was impressed that Zombies in this game do not (most of the time) walk through walls. They do not open doors. But they will find an open door if there is one and there are many doors in each building. So it became protocol when running from a Zombie to shut the door behind me and then rush to shut all the doors in the house. But even though I could safely lock myself up in in a building to my horror the sounds of a Zombie trying to get in actually attracted MORE ZOMBIES!!!! Where there was only 1 Zombie quickly became 3 then 5 and then 8 Zombies surrounding the building I was held up in. They knew I was there and they wanted to eat me! It was at this moment that I began to really start having a lot of fun. Now I started feeling like I am in a Zombie Apocalypses. I charged out of the back door , axe ready, and took out the first Zombie I saw. I looked around, there is another coming my way, then another coming around the corner of the house. After several Zombies dead I believed I had them all I began chopping them up for cloth. All of a sudden I hear a noise behind me, holy shit another Zombie creeping up on me. And then oh shit one of them on the ground was only knocked out! After dispatching the final two I ran back into the house to bandage and calm down. For a second there it felt like I was playing a scene from a Zombie movie. No words can properly describe the experience of being surrounded in a house, bursting out the door in a melee Zombie killing rage and then having the shit scared out of you when one comes up from behind and distract you while another rises up that wasn't quite dead. Needless to say, that was a lot of fun!
The Map While the events that Ive detailed seem like hours gone by, the time that passed was no more than 15 to 20 minutes tops. By the time I had conquered this little suburb of the immediate threats my buddies showed up in a cop car. I quickly hopped in and we took off driving around looking for wild animals to harvest for bladders to turn into fuel. I realized the map is not as big as it looks and you can traverse it fairly fast even on foot. All main roads basically make a square around the map and it became obvious that finding a main road will eventually help you find a town/city but most importantly a sign or even a poster map. As someone who has played many different Arma2 maps with the DayZ mod, I always enjoyed the smaller maps so this was a pleasant surprise to know that when I die, which will be inevitable, I can probably catch back up with friends a little easier. Its also important to note that I enjoy not only killing Zombies but bandits as well. A smaller map means I can get into the action a lot faster than in previous experiences. This was a plus for me.
Bandits I honestly don't want to go into too much detail here. We got into a firefight in PV, I was shot in the back by a 1911 because I hit V and holstered my weapon..... We found a housing development with 2 jeeps which ended up attracting a few bandits and we had a firefight inside a house where I ended up holding up in a bedroom ready to shoot an arrow into the head of anyone opening the door (we lost one friend and the other killed the bandits with an AR). PvP is not much different than in other games and standoffs get your heart pumping per the usual.
Thoughts After I Logged Out In the end I found that H1Z1 has plenty of different features to offer fans of the genre. I found that the bugs present in the game are not anymore game breaking than bugs found in other games and anyone who could play DayZ the mod or even SA and enjoy it with the bugs will not feel like anything in this game is any more game breaking. I haven't ran into any hackers that I am aware of yet, but again I lived through the DayZ Mod and would still recommend it and SA to friends. Endgame is not much different than other games as in the endgame is what you make of it. Games of this genre are one side getting geared up and the other side experiencing situations where split seconds decisions are the only thing between life and death of your character.
I hope this can help anyone on the fence determine if its worth checking out. If you are a fan of DayZ Mod and SA you might find that this game is fun too, takes a little less time commitment, and has enough differences to remove it from being a genre clone. Thanks for reading!
TL;DR
Plenty of features that are different than other games and plenty of features that make you feel at home in the genre
Arguably better Zombies in any of the games so far. Some are faster and stronger so there is variety
Crafting is a lot more intuitive than at first glance
No buggier than the other games, possibly less buggy considering its current in-development time
Less time traveling the map to meet friends and is much easier to get your barrings
Plenty of survival elements and game play can easily be immersive if you want it to be
