An investment of time and soul.

A few days ago I invested both time and a little bit of money in something I never thought I’d touch;
The WarZ, now known as Infestation: Survivor Stories.

15€ on steam. As a poor student, I could have used that money to buy something else; a good game, food, drinks. So why did I buy it? Well, there is a certain attraction in playing such a controversial title. That and, well, I did enjoy DayZ. Despite all it’s flaws, there was always that adrenaline/dopamine-filled sensation when you were sneaking around in a barn or in a market.

So.. I’ve played around with it for a few hours and, I guess, give it a ”fair review”.
– The adrenaline/dopamine-filled feeling when stalking another player is still there.
– The pathfinding is shit. Really awful. This is still a bit better than DayZ’s but not by much at all, and this is a 15 dollar title, not a free mod developed by a single person.
– The downtime is still there, just like in DayZ, but it’s not as long anymore. It doesn’t take a few hours of running getting somewhere.
– It’s very much pay-to-win. But it’s such a huge world you will not encounter that many players who have purchased weapons. And if they have and you kill them you get their loot, so I guess it’s pretty fair.

– The inventory is a lot easier to access. Which is both good and bad I guess. Better accessability means a bigger playerbase but we managed just fine with DayZ’s system, even if it took some time.
– There is an ”account-bank”, which is soooo good. You can store items for later plays, whereas you could NEVER store items anywhere in DayZ. To the best of my knowledge anyway, if this was not implemented at a later date. This means you can also store items which you can give to friends and the likes.
– WarZ actually has a grouping-system. DayZ does, or well did, not.
– As DayZ is a bit harder to learn, with inventory management and such, it has a bit less toxicity in it as the audience is a bit older, more mature.

– Gun handling is better in ISS, but not at all as good as it needs to be.
– The world-part i’ll split up into four sections: Textures, Models, Animations, Scale and Realism.

1. In the Textures-department, WarZ is a clear winner. The textures on the models are sometimes very, very bad but since the Arma II maps are so huge.. Well, let’s just say that DayZ’s texture quality is not that great.
2. The modeling of cars and houses are pretty good. But… Leaves and Branches aswell as bushes are so, so, so, very atrocious. Blergh. Yuck. Kablam-o. The character model is sub-par for this decade, but it’s alright I guess. The hit/collisionboxes are way better than DayZ’s, but also sub-par, as there’s still no real ”head shots”, just ”upper-body shots”.
   TL;DR: Better than DayZ’s, still sub-par.
3. Animations: Running is OK, Zombies ”roaming” looks good.. I guess they are OK. But there is one maaassiv thing that looks so, very, terrible: The grass-in-the-wind ambient animation. Every, single, stroke of grass which by it’s own manages to look like shit, somehow manages to look even worse when it all waves in the wind in the exact same pace.. Bleh.
4. Scale is easy. WarZ just falls flat in it’s ass trying to portay cities, farms, towns or villages.. They all look waaay too small, way to cramped. And the world is, what, a tenth?(If that?) As big as DayZ’s Chernarus. Oh, and no vehicles? That’s just a fail on their part.
5. Realism. ISS: No Vehicles, More Weapon-spawnpoints, More zombies where there should be less. A lot more cramped towns. An account-wide bank. DayZ just flat out wins in this area.

Conclusion: The WarZ, later re-named Infestation: Survivor Stories, is a 15$ game with a real development-team. Maybe, what, 15-20 people? DayZ is a free mod for Arma II. Compared to eachother, without taking that in comparison, ISS is the better game. You will have a better time with that than you will with DayZ, most likely. But, for what ISS really is.. It would take so little, so very little, to make a better game. That is something the real, stand-alone, DayZ will fix. The Standalone will leave WarZ in the dust when it comes to, basically, anything. I’d imagine anyway.

Here’s to hoping the Standalone DayZ can redeem what may be one of the most thrilling genres there is!