Reviews
[Review] ‘DayZ’ Misses Out on Big Potential and Makes For a Disappointingly Dreadful Experience
Bloody Disgusting heads to Chernarus and finds the struggle to survive has got no easier on PS4. Read the DayZ review to find out why great potential remains unfulfilled.
On paper, DayZ reads like an intriguing experience: tossed into the fictional post-Soviet Republic of Chernarus, you take on the role of a survivor in an apocalyptic wasteland plagued by “infected” beings. The primary goal of players in DayZ is to survive; the game’s MMO approach allows them to explore a huge open world where they can gather supplies and work alongside other players. With the PC and Xbox One version of the game having fully-released back in December of 2018 after a few years of Early Access, the game is now available on PlayStation 4.
All of this sounds like an excellent time and something that fans of the zombie genre would absolutely adore. In actuality, however, DayZ ends up being a primarily dreadful experience. While the gameplay itself provides enough elements to meet the most basic needs of the survival genre, DayZ ends up suffering the most in its environment. Namely, just how quickly it goes from ominous atmosphere to downright boring tedium.
Upon arriving at the game’s main menu, you have the option to watch an introductory video that provides the general requirements of survival you will need to be aware of; as well as a tutorial of the various meters important to maintaining your avatar’s health. These interactions include combat with the infected, as well as a simple understanding of picking up items and how the item management system works. In particular, regarding character stats, you’ll need to keep track of such things as hydration, calories, temperature, blood loss, and overall health.
You have the option to join a variety of servers, with locations open to the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Upon entering a server you are dropped into a random section of DayZ’s world, and this is where issues begin to arise.
When starting out, the game does provide you some items like a fruit and drink of some sort, a stone knife, a road flare, and other miscellaneous items. From there you are open to explore as freely as you want. There are no other in-game objectives besides just attempting to survive. As you begin roaming the landscape of Chernarus, one can’t help but feel a sense of despair coming from the game world. The problem here is that while the atmosphere does play into the world’s narrative at first, it slowly becomes apparent that the game is devoid of substance.
You do have the opportunity to come across a map at some point in DayZ, but you don’t start out with one; since you are placed randomly within the world, there’s a big potential to aimlessly run around lost for far too long. Even though DayZ has its variety of small towns, warehouses, and other locales, a lot of its world is made of the wilderness; in my experience playing the game, I was dropped just outside of the woods, running in a single direction for great lengths of time and only coming across small structures there and then. Those structures can also be incredibly devoid of elements of interaction. While DayZ does take place in a setting where people have had to scavenge for goods, for a video game, I experienced a remarkable lack of interesting supplies during my gameplay.
The random placement, along with no map, also brings out a tremendous amount of frustration when playing at night. Thanks to the single road flare you are provided, you are able to see while you run around; the problem, however, is that as soon as that flare is out, and assuming you have no other means of light, forget trying to see. The night of DayZ is that of a remarkable darkness that practically blinds your vision. When my flare went out after long periods of roaming and looking for a light, I was left in the darkness having to guess my way through the environment. If you are by yourself at night, DayZ pretty much becomes impossible to move forward until the sun is out.
In MMOs like World of Warcraft, or even Fallout 76, the player is put on a path to complete small objectives; this path guarantees that the player will not only have the chance to better understand the mechanics of the game, but that they will also slowly get to know the world. DayZ makes the assumption that you’ve played MMOs before and are fine with heading out on your own; this is cool and all for the realistic aspect of survival, but it’s also overwhelming for new and veteran players alike. The game is so big that you end up spending far too much time trying to look for supplies and figuring out where you are. Giving the player even a partially drawn map from the start would have made for an immense improvement in travel, and confronted issues like traveling at night.
And for the particular narrative that DayZ is rolling with, there’s little to no environmental storytelling involved. Other than blood smears on walls and floors and that of random items about, there isn’t a thing that gives you an idea of what life was like before the population dwindled. There’s potential in these kinds of games to provide depth to the world players embark through, and DayZ decides to skip out on any environmental context.
One locale of DayZ that is far more interesting than its vast wilderness is its city setting. Full of buildings and debris, the environment offers a variety of personal touches; that said, it’s disappointing that I was only able to stumble upon it once after days of playing.
Referring back to those stats you need to be aware of regarding survival, it’s essential that you maintain your character’s health with plenty of hydration, along with eating. In my experience with the game, I rarely came across food or drink, my primary means of the latter depending on if I could find a stream nearby to drink from. What I found for a good majority of items in DayZ were clothes; while clothing can be torn to create bandages when bleeding or help with resistance to bad weather, it became overwhelming after a while to come across a plethora of motorcycle helmets and rarely an actual means of keeping my character alive. Because of this, I found my character’s hydration levels constantly suffering and in need of attention I could not possibly give them.
After a few hours I finally did find some weapons. Ammo and guns are sparse, but you also have the opportunity to come across items such as an axe or knife. Melee weapons are good at taking out enemies without causing too much sound, that is if you actually come across them.
There and then you will stumble upon a single infected or a small group of them. While single enemies are easy to take down, a group provides a more adrenaline-driven challenge. However, for a world that is meant to have gone to ruin and be inhabited by infected threats, it’s odd to see so little during long periods of playing. And when pitted against a single threat, it’s also startling to see how dumb the AI can be at times; some enemies will charge you in 28 Days Later style, other times they will just stand there as you bash them over the head.
Player interaction is a big component in DayZ; in meeting up with others, you can adventure through Chernarus together fighting the infected and setting up a camp. If you are going at the game by yourself, player interaction is that of a coin flip; while I experienced one player who was friendly in introducing themselves, I met a couple who made every effort to kill me.
The inventory system is generous in how you can manage all your items. The logic in how much weight you can handle is fair, even if the physical interaction of items is a little irksome. When holding a flare at night, you cannot hold a weapon at the same time; if an enemy is charging at you, you’ll need to put down said flare and then equip a weapon while an infected or another person is attacking you. Regarding other technical aspects, the game looks fine graphically, with random moments of clipping and delays in textures popping up at times.
The great shame here is that there are a lot of good ideas in DayZ, it’s just that they are poorly executed. The immense open world and survival mechanics all read really cool on paper, and at the start of one’s journey come off intriguing. As one dives deeper into DayZ, however, the realization washes over them regarding just how empty the experience feels. What could change this is if the developer decides to add more to DayZ, opening up the accessibility of the game. For now, DayZ is more of a disappointment in what could have been a great survival title.
DayZ review code provided by the publisher.
DayZ is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
It’s a big world out there, and that alone can make it seem pretty scary for some people. The uncertainty, the unknown, the unfamiliar – while there are those among us who crave exploration, they’re seemingly outnumbered by those who prefer to close their doors, their borders, and their hearts to whomever – and whatever – sits on the other side. The temptation will be strong to label The Outer Threat as a Temu Disclosure Day, but open your heart to it (and accept its budgetary limitations), and you’ll be rewarded with an engaging, hopeful genre tale.
Daniel (Mark O’Brien) is an astrophysicist living on a remote farm with Michelle (Constance Wu) and their two children (Callista Crowe, Isaac Smelcer-Zhang). He retreats every day to an underground bunker where he monitors and searches the universe for signs of extraterrestrial life, and one morning he finds just that – clear evidence of an advanced civilization that’s successfully found a way to harvest the power of their solar system’s sun. He’s understandably ecstatic and in a hurry to tell the world, but Michelle, a retired scientist who’s nearly given up on humanity as a whole and chooses to focus solely on her family, is adamant that he keep quiet.
He goes against her wishes, obviously, and sends an email filled with data attachments to his boss at NORAD. The result is almost immediate as electrical power, internet connections, and cell service all shut off in and around their small nearby town. Soon small drones are buzzing their farm and peeping in their windows, MQ-9 Reapers are bombing their bunker, and unmarked cars are following their every move.
Writer/director William Woods makes his directorial debut with The Outer Threat, and while his ambitions dwarf his resources, the end result is a compelling family adventure that argues for opening our metaphorical doors to the unknown. A strong cast, that also includes a supporting turn from the always welcome William Fichtner, helps carry the downtime between suspense sequences and minor set pieces. It’s an undeniably small film, but its ideas and conversations are exponentially bigger.
Michelle’s beef with humankind stems from both the personal and the general state of the world at large. Her father (Oscar Hsu) is also a scientist, and like Daniel, he risked valuing his work over his family to the point that Michelle no longer speaks with him. Her bigger issue is knowing that our species is a poor steward of both this planet and each other, and when Daniel accuses her of having little faith in humanity, she replies only “not without reason.”
One of The Outer Threat’s most interesting sequences will feel like a disjointed detour to some, but it actually encapsulates one of the film’s central themes in one simple exchange. The family is on the road and heading to Michelle’s father’s place – she’s not thrilled, but his past work with the government might come in handy – when they decide to stop for food. They reach a tiny town that looks deceptively abandoned and are welcomed into a diner by the owner, Sam (Fichtner), and his young granddaughter.
He’s initially cautious and explains that soldiers had passed through, telling everyone to remain indoors, but he proceeds to feed the family in need while explaining that he’s hoping to scrounge up some fuel to reconnect with the rest of his family. Sam also shares with Michelle that he hesitated to open his door to them simply because they were different. He was fearful, and now he’s ashamed and worried that maybe he’s not the man he thought he was. “What really scares me,” he adds, “was the thought that maybe, just maybe, we’re all rotten.”
She listens. She leaves. And she never tells him about the numerous extra canisters of gas they have in the back of their pickup truck.
It’s a striking character beat as our protagonist, even halfway through the film, remains steadfast in her disconnect from others. She’s far from the only one in need of change, though, as it was Daniel’s hubris and ego that led to this situation in the first place. “Our kids should be home safe,” she tells him at one point, “but you just had to let the world know how smart you are.” Woods and his cast mine drama from this brilliant but misaligned couple, and both Wu and O’Brien are convincing in their motivations and emotions.
Somewhat less convincing are the film’s occasional swings at big visual effects. Drones and weather balloons in the sky are passable, but explosions, vast encampments, and more land with an iffy digital thud. None of them are deal breakers, though, both because they’re used sparingly and because the characters and their dilemma take center stage.
Woods, whose best and brightest accomplishment remains serving as a producer on the criminally underseen 2020 film, The Kid Detective, arguably bites off a bit more than he can chew with The Outer Threat. His big ideas on both story and humankind are inevitably under-explored in a film of this size, and you’ll be left wishing he had a bigger budget behind him. Audiences are bound to expect something more from the film’s third act, especially, so set your expectations accordingly going in that this is more a film about human connection and ideals than it is a tale of alien invasion.
There are moments here of genuine suspense and thrills, but the film’s power rests in those human beats. From Sam revealing he was concealing a gun while making them pancakes, to Michelle’s father pushing aside huge news of world-altering significance so he can instead spend time with grandchildren he’s only just met, to feuding kids combining their skills for an act of bravery, this is a movie about people who can be so much more than we believe ourselves capable of being.
“For thousands of years human beings have been the dominant species on this planet,” says a character at a certain point, “but that’s no longer the case.” The trailer teases this line, and while you can’t fault the marketing department, it might feel like a bit of a bait and switch by the time the end credits roll. You can choose to be underwhelmed, but here’s hoping you open the door to the film’s hopefulness instead.
The Outer Threat is now available on VOD and Digital.
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