DayZ alpha hits Steam: anyone up for some zombie MMO action?

As far as mods go, DayZ might be the most successful mod to a major game since DoTA. The original mod, which turned military simulation game Arma 2 into a zombie survival MMO shooter, hit the scene last year and racked up a massive player count with remarkable speed, spawning a variety of sub-mods and spin-offs in the process. But just as DoTA eventually became a standalone game, a standalone version of DayZ has been in development for some time now. And today, it finally hit Steam early access.

The standalone game features updated graphics and new gameplay elements, but at its core the experience remains the same. Players spawn into a gigantic map with dozens of other players and thousands of zombies, armed with nothing but their fists. From there, what they do is entirely their choice; the game has no NPCs, quests, or endgame. You simply try to survive for as long as you can in whatever way you see fit (and you’ll want to survive, because when you die you start over again with nothing). The stories in the game are created together with other players, on the fly. There are tons of videos of crazy things happening in this mod on Youtube, but here’s one in which a player was kidnapped and forced to participate in a kind of game show. All orchestrated by other players:

In any event, the standalone promises more of the same in an improved environment that hopefully doesn’t feature as much hacking, griefing, and duping as the mod originally got infested with. But if you’re going to purchase it right now, do be aware that this game is in alpha, which means it’s nowhere close to finished, is probably full of bugs, and could change significantly between now and the final release.

We’ll have a first impressions post for you tomorrow to help you decide whether or not it’s for you, but even if you don’t like shooters or MMOs, I’d recommend giving it some thought. I had a lot of fun with the DayZ mod and it’s a very interesting kind of social experiment to turn players loose in the world with no guidelines and see how they behave.

This being Games in Asia, I should also point out that while the game wasn’t developed in Asia, it does have an interesting connection to Singapore, but that’s a topic for a future post. In the meantime, DayZ fans, it’s time to fire up your PCs and start downloading (if you want to pony up the $30 the game costs in early access, anyway).

(Steam)