DayZ review: Are they avoiding issues by releasing on consoles?

A few months ago, “DayZ” released on consoles after being solely for PC, but where they using it as a band aid for the issues present in the game?

DayZ was released originally in December 2018 for Microsoft Windows. Just a few months ago, it released for PS4 and Xbox One. It was developed and published by Bohemia Interactive. You spawn as a survivor randomly on a map. So, where does DayZ on console stack up?

I haven’t had very much luck with survival games in the past and I have tried. If you follow my reviews, you saw the difficulties I had with Fade to Silence.

Maybe that just means I can’t survive in the wild. Perhaps that is true (it’s true) but there are survival games done well and survival games that feel like a wasteland when they rightfully shouldn’t.

It is up to you to scavenge for supplies, weapons, clothes and gear to survive the world and oh yeah, there are zombies too. You may encounter other players and have the chance to kill or cooperate with them.

More from 1428 Elm

I had SUCH trouble with this game and it’s not for lack of trying. I would have trouble getting onto a server and when I did, they almost always spawned me at night. I don’t know if you know this, but night is frickin’ dark and you don’t spawn with a torch or flashlight. So there I am, bumbling around the where evers, looking for anything and most of the time running into things and falling into some body of water.

When DayZ did spawn me into a server with light, it was dusk so I had about 5-10 minutes to find something to light my way. I never could so I was sitting with a dark screen for what felt like forever. Maybe I am playing this wrong, but it wasn’t fun.

Not only that, the game feels EMPTY. I never ran into a single player, no matter how many servers I popped into. I take that back, once I saw a dude run outside the building I was in. I gave chase and he was gone. Wow…human contact.

The zombies don’t really do much and never noticed me to a point where they would attack so they were never a threat. So the world is empty of players and zombies. At least when Rage 2 felt empty, there were still repetitive NPCs that would attack.

The whole thing made me sad because I really wanted to like this. I love zombie games…a lot. I play almost every zombie game I can get my hands on and this didn’t feel like a zombie game. Hell, it didn’t even feel like a game. It was strange and empty.