PZ, the greatest zombie survival game made to date. I said it about 7 days to die, but having now played PZ for a short while I can say this tops it just about. Both of these games are genre defining. This game is absolutely brutal and it's worth noting that for any small mistake you can lose everything, and I mean SMALL, half a second pressing D when you should have been pressing D+S can seal your fate. Maybe you tried firing that gun you just found. Maybe you printed too much. This game is absolutely programmed for you to lose. Yet somehow this roguelite style of gameplay, if you can call it that, always makes it apparent what you did wrong. It wasn't RNG, it wasn't zombies spawning on top of you, it was you, a choice you consciously made. That feeling is one that will just make you laugh in despair as you lose a survivor 5 months into the game, you finally saw winter! The Darkest Dungeon quote "Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer" is not more appropriate than in PZ.

"This is how you died" like the end credits of a movie is where you start every game. The world is the same on month 6 as it is on day 1 which I found great as it just feels right, there's no mutant zombies which explode or spit, these (in default settings) are your classic mindless zombies you can just about outpace by walking as they shamble. EASY you might think, but with the survival systems in place it's not a simple case of just getting a fork and stabbing 250 zombies to death in your firt 5 minutes, your current movie star physically can't do it. The zombies will also try to track you down by going to the last heard on seen location. While this is relatively easy to get out of it can cause quite a few jumps. Add to that the sheer number of zombies in PZ and you'll likely find many of your first deaths simply accepting that what works in other games does not apply here at all. It's not always best to be like Ricky Bobby. The end will present you with a L4D style bit of info as you watch your character begin to shamble around the world as one of the new undead, how many zombies you liberated and how long you survived. Will you continue in this world with a new survivor and hunt down your previous character, or start anew? There are pros and cons to both and both are valid. Glorious.

Let's talk canvas. The default map for this game is mind boggling at over 300km^2. Granted a lot of it is forest, but everything has been hand crafted in structure. I highly doubt anyone to date has seen everything with one character before dying. This isn't some GTA where you drive around like a lunatic, in PZ getting around the map means uncleared areas, It means zombies migrating to areas you have cleared. That mechanic that has them investigate noise turns what was first a peaceful highway in one direction into a nightmare on the way back as they were attracted to a car driving along and go to see if there's fresh brains available. It's also not a Dead Island where mowing a thousand zombies down in a car is the way as hitting a zombie damages that part of the car. You'd think foot might be an option but the distances are HUGE bring it's own issues. The recent addition of Louisville is a must see once you think you can make it, a fantastic place to base up. Again, glorious.

The skill system is sublime. While more overhauls are coming to the more dull ones, if the other skills that have been reworked are anything to go by I cannot wait to see what The Indie Stone implement as they've set the bar so high. Learning about how this game works is tough and the tutorial is barebones, you're taught how to use a sink, drink water, and stab a zombie, and of course, die. Now this is interesting as the game is about learning through failing and it's probably the best use case of a minimal tutorial I've experienced, it doesn't seem like a lazy dev team, it absolutely fits the theme of PZ to the core. Absolutely glorious.

Of course this is still in alpha and it's hard to tell as it's such a solid game. I didn't have one single crash in 200 hours which was surprising. Even after maybe 40 hours with large numbers of mods... No crashes, a strange thing to mention but seems appropriate these days. My main gripe a couple of hundred hours in is the UI, it just doesn't meet the standard of the rest of the game in many regards and has been mildly frustrating despite being fully functional. For such a minor complaint this is clearly glorious.

This game has so much potential and it's rare to be able to say this without it being negative at all, it's just so good that the potential is up near Alpha Centauri and it's currently flying past Jupiter. Most games barely even have potential near the moon (for scale). Now, if this wasn't enough they've only gone and made the game easy to set how you want by default with most people playing some version of "Sandbox" with their own preferences (e.g. sprinting zombies, instant death, number of zombies, zombie mechanics etc etc). If that's not enough they have also made it pretty easy to mod the game and the mod community is on the case bringing a huge raft of mods to suite your taste from news maps, buildings, items, skills, UI updates, and ore. This is really the ultimate zombie sandbox. You know what it is? It's GLORIOUS.

PZ, the greatest zombie survival game made to date. I said it about 7 days to die, but having now played PZ for a short while I can say this tops it just about. Both of these games are genre defining. This game is absolutely brutal and it's worth noting that for any small mistake you can lose everything, and I mean SMALL, half a second pressing D when you should have been pressing D+S can seal your fate. Maybe you tried firing that gun you just found. Maybe you printed too much. This game is absolutely programmed for you to lose. Yet somehow this roguelite style of gameplay, if you can call it that, always makes it apparent what you did wrong. It wasn't RNG, it wasn't zombies spawning on top of you, it was you, a choice you consciously made. That feeling is one that will just make you laugh in despair as you lose a survivor 5 months into the game, you finally saw winter! The Darkest Dungeon quote "Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer" is not more appropriate than in PZ. "This is how you died" like the end credits of a movie is where you start every game. The world is the same on month 6 as it is on day 1 which I found great as it just feels right, there's no mutant zombies which explode or spit, these (in default settings) are your classic mindless zombies you can just about outpace by walking as they shamble. EASY you might think, but with the survival systems in place it's not a simple case of just getting a fork and stabbing 250 zombies to death in your firt 5 minutes, your current movie star physically can't do it. The zombies will also try to track you down by going to the last heard on seen location. While this is relatively easy to get out of it can cause quite a few jumps. Add to that the sheer number of zombies in PZ and you'll likely find many of your first deaths simply accepting that what works in other games does not apply here at all. It's not always best to be like Ricky Bobby. The end will present you with a L4D style bit of info as you watch your character begin to shamble around the world as one of the new undead, how many zombies you liberated and how long you survived. Will you continue in this world with a new survivor and hunt down your previous character, or start anew? There are pros and cons to both and both are valid. Glorious. Let's talk canvas. The default map for this game is mind boggling at over 300km^2. Granted a lot of it is forest, but everything has been hand crafted in structure. I highly doubt anyone to date has seen everything with one character before dying. This isn't some GTA where you drive around like a lunatic, in PZ getting around the map means uncleared areas, It means zombies migrating to areas you have cleared. That mechanic that has them investigate noise turns what was first a peaceful highway in one direction into a nightmare on the way back as they were attracted to a car driving along and go to see if there's fresh brains available. It's also not a Dead Island where mowing a thousand zombies down in a car is the way as hitting a zombie damages that part of the car. You'd think foot might be an option but the distances are HUGE bring it's own issues. The recent addition of Louisville is a must see once you think you can make it, a fantastic place to base up. Again, glorious. The skill system is sublime. While more overhauls are coming to the more dull ones, if the other skills that have been reworked are anything to go by I cannot wait to see what The Indie Stone implement as they've set the bar so high. Learning about how this game works is tough and the tutorial is barebones, you're taught how to use a sink, drink water, and stab a zombie, and of course, die. Now this is interesting as the game is about learning through failing and it's probably the best use case of a minimal tutorial I've experienced, it doesn't seem like a lazy dev team, it absolutely fits the theme of PZ to the core. Absolutely glorious. Of course this is still in alpha and it's hard to tell as it's such a solid game. I didn't have one single crash in 200 hours which was surprising. Even after maybe 40 hours with large numbers of mods... No crashes, a strange thing to mention but seems appropriate these days. My main gripe a couple of hundred hours in is the UI, it just doesn't meet the standard of the rest of the game in many regards and has been mildly frustrating despite being fully functional. For such a minor complaint this is clearly glorious. This game has so much potential and it's rare to be able to say this without it being negative at all, it's just so good that the potential is up near Alpha Centauri and it's currently flying past Jupiter. Most games barely even have potential near the moon (for scale). Now, if this wasn't enough they've only gone and made the game easy to set how you want by default with most people playing some version of "Sandbox" with their own preferences (e.g. sprinting zombies, instant death, number of zombies, zombie mechanics etc etc). If that's not enough they have also made it pretty easy to mod the game and the mod community is on the case bringing a huge raft of mods to suite your taste from news maps, buildings, items, skills, UI updates, and ore. This is really the ultimate zombie sandbox. You know what it is? It's GLORIOUS.