Recent reviews by 501st Callahans Prior

Project Zomboid is easily one of the most played games in my Library, standing at, at the time of this post, 1,214.2 hours. I've owned this game for years now, and have seen both the good, and the bad.

The Pros:
+++ This game does what so few others actually do. Realistic survival in the apocalypse, forfilling a nich in the gerne while still applying to the whole zombie apocalypse. You have your standard inventory, but if you want have a backpack? Sure, that backpack has it's own inventory space- But fill up that backpack too heavily, and it can still weigh you down. You want some of that river water? Sure, make sure to clean it first. Weapons, including guns, will break with over use. Eat bad food for months on end, and you'll find yourself a tad bit unhealthy. Want power after the power cuts? Gotta find a generator- But your character needs to know how to connect properly before he can use it.

And most of all, Beware the all powerful bite. You're not immune. If you are bitten, prepare to join the ranks of the undead.

+++ Play the game how you want to. You want to loot the entire map and amass a horde of goods? Be my guest. You want to craft your own improvised tools? Be my guest. Do you want to turn the mall into a fortress of (un)death? Be my guest. Or maybe, you want to build your own Anti-Zombie fortress. Scavange for food, or farm/hunt/fish your food.

+++ In addition to realism above, contend with not just the dead, but your own personal feelings. If you find yourself trapped in a building, you have to find a way to entertain your character, lest his own bordem, and eventually depression, cripple him before the undead leave. You can carry more weight than your main limit- Bare in mind however the heavier it gets after that, the slower, and more tired you become. Beware weather slowing and sickening you. Don't leave corpses around, unless you want to fall ill. Be ready to deal with different kinds of wounds, not all can simply be bandaged and left alone.

+++ Pure single player customability. The game offers a very wide variety of options for your game, down to integers. You want zombies to hear you chop a tree from blocks away? You can make it so. You want them to run you down like an olympic sprinter? That can be arranged. You want to find boxes of construction supplies everywhere? That can be arranged? You want to find /none/ at all? That can be arranged.

You want it to rain every five seconds? Fine. You want it to be dry as hell? Cool. Maybe you want farming to go fast, slow, produce more, produce less, maybe you want generators everywhere, maybe you want the map power to stick around for almost forever.

You can either make it the easiest apocalypse ever, or get down and dirty in worst case scenario class three outbreak hell.

+++Active Dev Community
While some may blast the development community for not adding in NPC's as of yet, don't let that disuade you from believing the Dev's are lazy. They make a constant log of their activites every monday, and often showcase their latest work. They are constantly putting out new beta versions of their game for anyone to help test, and once they fix enough bugs, they slam it all toghther, and work on the next set. For an early access game, such communication from the development team is a good sight, when compared to games such as *Cough* Starmade *Cough*

+Game Atmosphere
Take a walk around the town in game, even with zombies off. Seems like it's abandoned, yes? Even pristine?

As time goes on, that'll change. At first, you'll notice corpses in houses killed by no one, but tons of empty bleach bottles, or half taken medicne tablets. You'll see little signs, such as West Points "They will not take me" written in between buildings.

Fast forward a few months. Vines crawl up the sides of buildings, grass make their way into a growing system of cracks on the road. Trees begin to close into civilization. Enough time, and what were once plains in some areas, will be newborn forests, and what was once a thriving town in life, is a slowly decaying hunk of concrete and metal. And that's without the zombies.

Even worse, while NPC's aren't around, you'll hear 'Meta game events', or the Game's version of a left for dead AI director. Listen as dogs bark in the distance- And zombies near you go away to investigation. Helicopters from the outside world will roam, spot you, fly over- And draw the dead to you on accident. Gunshots sound in the distance, but when you go to investigate, you only find a few corpses of the dead. While the game has yet to introduce NPC's since it's very first few builds, it makes it clear that you're not the only one surviving, and that you could be on the road, unspotted by the hordes, only for some fool META GAME npc to fire off a shot blocks away, and the hungry eyes turn to you in their search.

+++Modability
Hydrocraft in of itself is something you'd want to check out. While the base game provides a lot in of itself, Hydrocraft is simply a /must have/ for those wishing to fill out the game world, and gives you many, many options on how to play the game. But it is by no means the only one- There's even a mod that adds in a tempoarily version of NPCs, if you're willing to do a little file work!

Cons:
-While the graphic design doesn't truely bother me, and infact pleases me, some people around me find that the isometric style of the game is a tad off putting, some prefering a first person experince, which they won't find here. While the game uses a sigh system to determine what your character can actually see or hear at any given point or time, this fact alone may bother you.

---Development time.
The DEV's /are/ active, and they /do/ develope a lot- However, while I personally find nothing wrong with their work time, others would like to poke at how they have yet to do NPC's for /years/. While this can be attirubted to the fact that they have to work everything else out, so that they can code in an NPC's ability to use it, it is something to note that some features wildly praised, are something you won't see for a while yet- They have their priorites.

-S/MP
Single player can become quickly, and utterly boring, if you're the type to play with others. There is simply so much to do with no set goal save 'survive', that playing alone seems... A waste of time almost. Thankfully, multiplayer exists, but beware a certain amount of server induced bugs that cause 'lag bites' or wonky combat.

It is, all in all, a game I thoroghly enjoy, perhapes too much given my record of it, and is something that for it's price, is incrediably worth it in my opinion. And if you get a few friends toghther to start playing a single map on it? All the power to you, my friend.