Recent reviews by ChronicIntel

Liked:
-Possibly the most immersive experience you can get outside of VR. This game is like no other. 90% of player interactions end in a short fight. You either get the jump on someone, or they get the jump on you (it's mostly the latter). A couple of seconds later and the game informs you that you are dead. The previous 5-10 hours of your character's life spent surviving by the grit of your teeth is gone in an instant and you have to start again from scratch.

Sounds frustrating, doesn't it? So why do I keep coming back to this game? A multiplayer game where you play most of the game by yourself, and when you do encounter someone, 90% of the time it ends in your death?

It's the other 10% that makes it worth it. For a mostly single-player guy like me, having the rare non-violent and cooperative experience with a fellow survivor in DayZ is like finally capturing the dragon or felling the main boss. It's the high that you keep coming back to.

There are many moments like this in DayZ. Like finding your first sniper rifle, hunting your first deer, surviving your first encounter with a pack of wolves, finding your first car, building your first shelter. These are the peaks.

Of course, there are valleys. Your first death from starvation or dehydration, your first betrayal, your first fall that breaks your leg, your first death from an unseen sniper. There are plenty of those, but those are a part of the experience that makes the highs even better, like finding that can of food just when you need it, or bonding with a fellow survivor.

Open world, survival, crafting game has become a meme at this point, but DayZ is one of the OGs that never ceases to amaze me.

-The continued support of the developers. The game regularly receives updates going on 10 years now. The game always feels fresh.

-Ample mods mean that the game will never get dull. In addition to the official main maps, there are a handful of others created by a robust modding community, including my overall favorite map, Namalsk.

Disliked:

-The learning curve is very steep. I've tried multiple times to get friends into this game, but both of them have more or less walked away from the game after a few hours. Beginner tips and tutorials are basically required viewing, as the game offers no tutorial of its own.
-Basebuilding and vehicles are not impossible, but extremely difficult and an enormous time sink solo. I've played the game for over 1000 hours, and have yet to get a car to working order on my own. If you harbor any hope of setting up a base and mode of transportation, you are either going to have try modded servers or become friends with a large group and pool your resources and time.
-Vehicles have been buggy. They have gotten better, but still, the few times I had access to a working car, I would always have someone else drive. I honestly don't know what state they are in now, but I’ve seen one too many videos of the vehicles being wonky and launched into space. Seeing a clip of it always seems funny at first until you realize how much time and effort it took to get it in the first place only to die and have it get destroyed.
Conclusion
There is no story, main quest, or goal to the game, it's just survive as long as you can. You make your own story. It’s the most immersive game I’ve ever played.

Liked:
+Good story and great atmosphere
+Voice acting is good
+Load times are quick
+Graphics are top notch. Probably the best looking game I've played so far with regards to lighting
+Includes a benchmark for testing graphics settings. Highly recommended to run it at least once before starting the game as it helps with avoiding some shader stutter during gameplay later on.
+The death animations are entertaining
+The developer seems to be committed to listening to feedback and addressing problems
+Full ultra-widescreen support during cut scenes. It's probably one of only a handful of games on the market with this feature.

Disliked:
-Technical performance is disappointing and distracting. The infamous shader compilation stutter is in full force on initial play-through, which destroys immersion in the early game. This has been patched so it's less egregious, but it's still there.
-Frame rate tanks like a brick on Jupiter during some cut-scenes and sometimes lingers when it returns to gameplay.
-There seems to be a memory leak which affects performance after playing for a few hours. Restarting from last checkpoint sometimes fixes the problem, but it's usually best to quit and restart.
-Lack of graphics options once you start a game. You need to quit to main menu if you want to want to make any major changes.
-Difficulty is uneven. It took awhile for me to figure out a strategy during the final boss fight (about an hour).
-Unable to listen to audio logs outside of inventory menu.
-Lack of replay-ability due to no New Game+ or similar bonuses for completing the game. I am aware that this is getting added later, but know that it's not included at the moment.

Final thoughts:
-Overall, I had a good time with the game. I hope it does well enough to get a sequel and see what else the developer has up it's sleeve, as I was a fan of Dead Space. It needs improvement on the technical side though.

I played this on a AMD Ryzen 5 5600 with a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6700 (non-XT), which came with the game. I have an ultrawide 1080p monitor with FreeSync. I played on mostly high detail with RTX lighting and transmission enabled on high, with 90% render scale for a little extra performance boost. I was able to get a fairly consistent 45 fps, with 30 fps minimums during chaotic combat and 60 fps maximum cap in place, as it seemed to reduce stutters a little bit. I turned of FSR as it seemed to cause some problems and not really help with performance.

The 30/45/60 fps min/avg/max numbers on a free sync monitor I thought were fine for a single-player game. Just be aware of the initial shader stutters.