Not that I'm defending the awful broken promises or even the game itself, I just wanted to share a glimmer of light that I experienced last night.
I play this game with 2 other dedicated friends, and we finally managed to get a car up and running. I had to trek a battery across Pleasant Valley, the largest city in the game and akin to chernogorsk or something in dayz. That in itself was an adventure - however, once the car was up and running and we set out on an adventure I was having the most fun I've had since dayz (that dayz-brand of paranoia and exultation when you survive an attack). You need to drive fairly carefully, and the sustenance demands on your character require regular stops for berries or water. Not to mention a full tank of gas only lasts about ten minutes at most - we were forced to consdier how we were going to find more fuel.
This is where it gets good - there's a recipe for biofuel made from animal fat. It doesn't make any real-life sense and it's a rather gamey way of letting players craft fuel, but by golly was it fun having a purpose for the deer hunting expeditions we took. Pull off to the side of the road, and hide the car. Hike into the forest and kill some deer with the bow (an amazingly easy weapon to craft but also one of the most fun). After getting enough kills, we would set up a campfire to boil water, cook venison, and craft biofuel for the next leg of the journey. The way zombies work in this game is noise-related, kind of like cataclysm:dda, so when you make a lot of noise with a bunch of people zombies end up shambling out of the forest. Only a few are runners, and one zombie is not any sort of challenge, but that quickly changes when three or four are charging at you. This would lead to a need to keep one person on watch at all times, and we played sort of a base-defense minigame within the game.
Our friend, later on, almost killed both of us when he felled a tree unannounced and it nearly crushed us against the ground.
Another time, we attracted the attention of a particularly angry bear and managed to kill it from the back of our pickup (one of the three passengers can sit in the back and shoot out). Bears are fucking scary I tell you - and they are so well camouflaged in the bush-covered mountain landscapes you can suffer some serious damaged if you fail to keep an eye out.
Finally, this whole adventure came to an end when we passed a small group of other players, who riddled the car with bullets and killed all three of us in a massive explosion.
I have my criticisms, and there's no doubt in my mind that the future of this game is murky at best, but if you have some close friends nothing beats roadtripping. The game looks like dayz, plays a little like dayz, but is really something else. Death is quick and regular, but so is picking up the pieces. The map is a perfect balance against dayz's endless walking - it would take maybe an hour or less to go from one edge to the other.
I have my reservations, but I'm also excited to go find another car and maybe a gun or two so we don't get slaughtered next time. The game shows some promise in one regard: letting players interact with systems in order to create larger systems. We understood we needed biofuel, and that the fuel came from deers and wolves. This forced us to create a regular camp and expedition elsewhere, which games us another game system to master. It's sort of tough to get across and I have a feeling a counter-circlejerk point might be less appreciated here, but I was having genuine fun despite all the bullshit.
As a singelplayer game, just don't purchase it. Have some friends? not bad.
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Topic: H1Z1, a zombie MMO (Read 13371 times)