Recent reviews by ShadowMajestic

Scratch that, spend the first hours on the only th ing you're able to do. Started out promosing, ends up much less more of the same thing

Seems great, but runs like ♥♥♥♥. I don't have the best system (it's beyond the minimum requirements) but I have to turn down the graphics to the lowest possible and it can't get near 60fps (only if I face a wall real close, otherwise it floats between 25-40) and it still has drops into the negative on a regular basis.

I don't care for graphics to much, I still play Q3 engine based games from time to time and they look horrible. But the lowest graphics make this game look ancient, and it just makes it harder to see everything, basically a nonstop motion blur.

According to the debug stats my GPU is the bottleneck (20.0ish, cpu at 8.0-10.0ish), which is all fine and dandy, but it basically looks like the first DOOM... so, ok. For the CPU it isn't even maxing a core, although overclocking it from 4ghz to 4.2ghz gave me 10 more average FPS. It has 8 of those (well 4 if DOOM is floating point heavy) and wasnt even maxing one core before the OC.

While for example BF4, goes at 60FPS with most on ultra (It does loses FPS when I'm in a jet or a tower collapses with all on ultra) and it looks sexy. Pretty sure a 64man Golmud is more resource intensive than the first few minutes of DOOM, tiny ass map, only a hand ful of mobs. I know you can't directly compare these 2 games, but the range of FPS games I enjoy is very limited. But BF handles a ton more entities with a whole lot more pixels to render, it just has a lot more going on and does it much more beautifully.

If you once beloved the game Evil Genius, and are a fan of Metal Gear Solid, this game is for you!

Build your own base, kidnap and brainwash (volunteer ;) ) people to become your (evil) minions, kidnap sheep, kill russians and horse around Afghanistan like you're Taliban.

This game has it all.

As of 11th of June 2015, recent update seems to have improved balance quite a bit. Few new tidbits added and the quality seems improved overall. Want to log some more hours before updating the review.

Alright, I've done another 20+ hours on the recent update and ready to update my Review.

They have really battled the imbalance that haunted this game. From most battles with 90% difference in scores, now most games are won by cooperation and tactic. Not overpowering yourself with 2 tiers higher weaponry as they used to be.

I wrote my review because I was strongly under the impression they where causing the imbalance on purpose, the forums where not allowed to express your unhappiness for the imba. So they really seemed to have a pay 2 win game, instead of a proper F2P game (F2P model works, don't worry about it FreeJam).

Luckily they seem to be going in the right direction, actually listen to the community. And greatly improved the major issue, imbalance.

The games feel properly balanced, most games are done by cooperation, teamwork and tactics. You have to cover the medic, everyone can't be a machinegunnner, group up to take over or defend the towers. Unless the enemy team is as disorganised as your team, you need to work together to get things done.

And small changes like moving the leave battle option :) It's a tiny change but it's to try and get people not to leave battle without making it impossible to leave.
Or the spawntimer getting adjusted the more people leave. (This still needs some tweaking IMO, but its a good addition)


All in all, my recommendation changes from negative to positive. The game feels quite balanced, is very playable and besides Smite the best game I've played in a long time.

If you're anything like me, liked to play with Lego when little, watch Battlebots back when it was still on TV, bored with the snail like progress of Minecraft, own games like 7 days to die and other blocklike "builder" games. This game is for you!

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I really tried liking this game, because the idea is absolutely awesome. Building your own vehicle with a ton of options, I really love it.

But the balance.... there is none, none at all. Every single game (I'm not even exaggerating) one team completely gets dominated. Not a little, by 90%+ differences. A team where the average overclock level is 4, versus a team where the average OC is 10. People abusing the tier system to play with weapons 2 tiers higher then the others, in other words. instakill galore!

0.61

Ok so I've played it for a while now, the game is better. A lot better optimized as I can get decent framerates with decent graphics. Compared to the 15FPS I would get previously.

But the game is still a walking simulator deluxe. All you do is find apples, cherries and wells. That is it, even on the low populated servers there is nothing to loot. Any server you join, any route you take... It doesn't matter, you will not find closed doors no matter what you do or where you go.

The zombies are a pain in the ass, they barely give up and run slightly faster than you, so if you're caught by one in an open field, you'll run until you starve to death. Oh and they can climb fences now unlike yours truly, so.. yeah. Let's keep making the zombies more difficult while they stay impossible to kill unless you want to risk death or have a ranged weapon at your disposal.

In its current state, after 4+ years of development, the game aint fun at all. While those guys at the Fun Pimps -in much less time- created a better DayZ.

Good thing the community is absolutely horrible. Must be one of the worst I've ever seen.
Gameplay is ok-ish, but its no fun when on every server you are allowed to play on (as on most you get kicked) 3/4th of the land is completely looted up to a point you find yourself starving to death multiple times before you even find an apple.
The Z's are now a lot better then they were a year ago. But whats the point? Devs should just remove them, they form no threat, only a slight annoyance.

But the community here, oh my god... I used to play the mod, more often then not I found myself a few people and started doing some actual teamwork. Clear towns, have fun, find other groups to kill or loot.
A teamwork game without first having to find friends who own DayZ, you could easily make them ingame.
The standalone however... Everyone will try to kill you, whether you have something of value or not, they WILL kill you if you do not GTFO. Yeah I got shot by bastards on the mod as well, but that was a rarity, maybe once every 20-30 gameplay hours. On DayZ..... you either die from starvation or a player. ♥♥♥♥ yeah! Survival! cause in the real world everyone would shoot others on sight, especially if he's unarmed and only wearing pants with a torch. And the starvation, the amount my chick has to eat is absolutely IMMENS. A Blue Whale eats less in a week then what the DayZ characters HAVE to eat in a day.

I dont want to solo a game like this. I have The Forrest for simular survive solo gameplay. I keep trying to give this game a chance. Development is horrid, community is horrid. The only thing good about DayZ is the mod. I wish I could get a refund.


UPDATE 0.54:
Worst part is, instead of actually fixing the zombie's, they now made them worse.
Zombies are still bugged as ever, except they now come at you like Usain Bolt, damage you like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hulk... Changing them from a slight annoyance into pure absolute garbage. Awesome.
Yeah the pathfinding is somewhat better and they dont walk through most fences anymore. But several times, the Z jumps up close, since there is a slight bump in the road, your char only walks slowly (wth?) and the moment the Z jumps he lands 5 hits in less than a second. While fully geared army clothes + a stab vest, helmet... all the works, end up bleeding, while already whiting out due to lack of food, no choice but to stop, fight and pray to god that the animation only screws up slightly so you can land a few hits, since often enough even landing a hit is a massive issue when DayZ slows to a crawl (10-15fps) and the animation is just there for sh*ts and giggles, it doesnt do anything but "make some sort of effort to show the Z is attacking and randomizing the Z's hitbox"
Every other survival like game has properly working mobs with decent animations without any issue, often enough they have a barrage of different mobs. DayZ only has 1...ONE! and we're 3 years into development and the progress has been absolutely abyssmall.

Good luck stocking up, newbies cant get close to any town anymore, or have to wait until a couple of geared fellows or a full party clear it first. Even fully geared the stealth Usain Hulks will come and get you (2 out of 3 zeds are stealth/silent). It wouldnt be that bad if you had some chance of spawning close to your friends, but as usual one spawns at Kamenka and the other at the blunt rocks. With most servers (if not all as it seems to me) are already 80% looted before you're even spawned..... GL&HF
You can also try to clear a town by only looting a few houses, but the Z's are bugged as hell and will see you even when sitting still in an attic and they're outside on the road (not even yard)... plus they're able to bughit you through half the walls.
Or by letting the z's chase you out of lootable locations, but yeah, you're either starving and/or dehydrated, so no time for that :)

You're absolutely screwed if you only play this game solo or with 1 or 2 other people.
The last few bits of fun this game offered is now gone. Doubt they'll fix it as the DayZ people claim "Its a survival, Zombies should be like this".....

Yeah I agree, Z's should be hard to deal with.... The only reason they've ALWAYS HAVE and STILL ARE hard to deal with, is the DayZ teams refusal to even attempt to fix even the animation of them, let alone make them a proper dangerous NPC, nahhhhhhhhh we'll just increase runspeed, remove turn speed and add some points to the attack damage, attack speed and defense, cause F*CK YEAH that'll show the players! (Correction: That will show the players to look for other survival games)

The Trucks made the game a bit better, but nowadays everyone knows of their excistance so finding one has become a rare occasion, especially when I found 2, left one of the trucks in idle there at 90liters fuel and drive off in the new shiny truck, drive a bit, end up stuck on a little pebble hidden in the grass due to absolutely idiotic hitboxes (the rocks didnt even CLOSELY touch the truck at all), am like ok, its EA, sh*t happens. The fuel was still at 110, only used up 10 liters. I run back to the previous truck which was still closeby, reach it, empty fuel...? You can cross the map with a fully fueled truck, no problem. Leave it idling for 5 minutes and its empty.

Loot is a massive issue, any server with 5+ people and you're running from starvation to dehydration because all you're looking for is food and drinks. Several servers crossing distances from Berezino to Pavlovo and every building has been looted, EVERY. Even the middle-of-no-where shacks and huts.

Yeah, every so often you have the luck of spawning near a location where only 1 or 2 people have been before you. But you're pretty much stuck walking from well to well due to the insane daily nutricional requirements.

DayZ daily nutricional requirements:
8 1 liter bottles of water
14 cans of coke/sprite etc
23 apples
8 berries
3 boxes of cereal
2 bags of rice
8 cans of food
3 cans of tuna

Specs:
FX-4100 OC'd at 4.2ghz, DayZ usage: 20-30%, even though my CPU kinda blows, DayZ doesnt even try to utilize any of it.
GTX 760, not the best but a decent card.

It can do 1080p, with that said, every graphical setting you can find set to low: 15-25 FPS.
Every graphical setting found to high-ultra and 10-15 FPS.
Unfortunately the difference is enough that I'm stuck with Q3-like graphics.

Update 9th of July:
Not sure what happened but my performance dropped dramatically. Everything to very low(640x400) and the FPS doesn't get above 31 and still drops to <20 when even trying to look in a direction of a town. CPU usage 10.7%, GPU is practically idling.....
There is something seriously wrong in the optimilization

If you used to have fun playing Theme Hospital, SimCity (old classic), Dungeon Keeper and the like. The type of strategy that forces you to think ahead and plan accordingly. Then Prison Architect is for you.

Prison Architect fits right in the same list of awesome games (the old fashioned graphics do help :) ) I used to play when I was still a kid. Highly addictive. I only bought PA recently due to lack of money before, already played countless of hours on a pirated version, actual my gametime is probably about 3-4 times of the registered gametime on steam :)

I know its technically a Tycoon game, but this (like TH/SC/DK) also feels like a RTS, with you being your worst enemy. Where starting over is normal because you made a mistake early on which piled up and exploded.
It also has mod support, which is a bit buggy. I tried a few but somehow it always breaks something, so for now I rather play the unmodified version. But I have high modding hopes for the future :) Can figure out thats not a high priority for the devs atm.

Anywho, this is a rare gem, its been a long time (probably since SupCom:FA came out) that I found a game that meets the games I used to play. If you dont have the game but do enjoy TH/SC/DK, this one is a must have for sure!