Anyplace, USA - A Zombie Story

The past few years have brought us a myriad of survival sandbox style games, many of which are zombie based. A little over a month ago Sony announced their first step into this genre with H1Z1.
Having a powerhouse developer like Sony take on a zombie survival project? Yes please.
I am a fan of Sony. Sure, they have made some poor choices some of their games don’t always pan out, but they know MMO’s and how to create huge worlds full of life and detail.
H1Z1 uses Planetside 2’s engine which already has proven mechanics for vehicles, weaponry and faction infrastructure. Unlike most of Sony’s games that are fantasy based, H1Z1 will take place on Earth 15 years in the future. Specifically, H1Z1 will take place in America. Though the map will be significantly smaller upon early release, the goal is to make the playable map BE the US in size, landmarks, and appearances. This mirroring of the real world will allow for some fun mechanics, including familiar places for the players to fight through, maybe even staking out your old neighborhood. It also allows them to get creative with tailoring scavenging. They have mentioned that guns will be found throughout the world, but maybe down south they are found more easily in living rooms and sheds, where in the north you will mainly find them in hunting supply stores or locked and hidden away.

But how does H1Z1 differ DayZ, Rust (read my views here) and WarZ, to name a few? There are a few key points that make the game stand out, but John Smedley, President of SOE, basically came out and said it’s not going to be 100% different than these games. At heart, it is a zombie apocalypse survival sandbox game. He pointed out his love for a variety of zombie movies, which at heart are all just zombie movies, as an example as to why the games don’t need to be black and white to each other.
That said, there definitely are differences between the games that excite me. Vehicles are already in game, though their exact mechanics and variety will vary as development progresses. Though all vehicles are ready to drive now, they hope to add mechanics that will allow for missing or broken components, requiring scavenging to repair them before you can just drive them off the lot.
DayZ’s world consists of already set infrastructure, collapsing and decomposing due to neglect and zombie carnage. Rust contains almost no pre-existing infrastructure, relying on players to scavenge materials and build structures on their own. H1Z1 hopes to fall in the middle of these two. The world will be prebuilt, starting with small villages and eventually getting to the point where large, broken cities will be added to the game. But in addition to these existing structures, the world will rely heavily on player build objects. And where things can be built, they can be destroyed. Players will be able to attack you structures and break in to kill and steal from you, so strategic building will be essential. Though strategic building may be tested with the addition of fire to the arsenal. The ability to burn structures is not in yet, but has been promised. It is unclear at this point of NPC’s will be able to do the same destruction, but I for one vote for this possibility.
The main difference between H1Z1 and other zombie survival games is an important one, in my mind. Where DayZ and Rust have devolved to flavored shooters on most servers, H1Z1 hopes to keep the players focused enough to work together by making zombies a real threat. Smedley points out his desire to focus on this game being about survival against the world. There will still be PVP, of course, and players will be a serious threat, but having zombies not just be easy targets full of loot will be a breath of fresh air in the genre. Oh, and he has mentioned the ability for GMs (or whatever they will call the admins) to spawn hordes of zombies at will. So that will be fun.

The game is very early in development, and John Smedley has made it clear the early access alpha coming soon will be all about finding what is and isn’t fun, bug smushing will come later in beta. The game has a lot of potential and a very dedicated group of developers at its helm. My wish list for a few mechanics to be added? Make zombies killable with headshots only. Sure, maim the crap out of them with body shots, but I want them dangerous until you damage the head. Add some sort of lasting damage from zombie attacks. Maybe special attacks like biting that will slowly kill you, letting you have a few minutes totry to get back and store some of your valuables before dropping on the spot. One thing that has been mentioned by other fans that I am on board with is making player corpses turn into the undead. This will discourage, or make much more chaotic, any large scale battles the players intend on having. Imagine fighting an enemy crew 10 vs. 10, and as the battle winds down, suddenly your 7 lost buddies are trying to eat your brains? The possibilities are endless really, and I think this dev group will be good about listening to the players and tailor fitting their game to its fan base.

I’m excited for H1Z1 to hit early access release on Steam for $20. An exact date hasn’t been mentioned, but about a month ago they said 4 – 6 weeks. They have promised a strong showing at E3 this coming week, so maybe we will see it hit steam right after the conference? I’ll keep you updated as I hear more.

Thanks for following!

-Mac

Check out the H1Z1 Reddit
Or their main site

There's Nothing Here For You But Death....

To survive.
In Rust, an indie game by the maker of Garry’s Mod, that’s the seemingly simple objective. You are plopped down stark naked in all your 3d modeled glory with nothing but a rock and a couple bandages and told to achieve this simple objective. Also plopped down in this world are other players, some just as naked as you. However, other players arrived long before you and now have clothes. And pickaxes. And fortresses. And body armor. And military grade rifles. And in a world where resources are limited and you are told to survive at all costs, those players with rifles are rarely friendly.

I logged in for the first time to a generic, unmodded server with over 100 other players. I wandered around trying to find a rock node or wood pile to hit with my rock for crafting materials so I could start carving my little place out of the hell that was the world. My first romp through the forest returned little for my efforts and as soon as I found a rock to harvest, I was greeted by another player stone axe blade first. My first death in Rust. I stopped counting at this point, which was good, because my current death toll is higher than I can count. I can honestly say my adrenaline was pumping fast as I wandered through the dark forests, constantly listening carefully for player footsteps, running and hiding scared when I heard them. When you die in Rust, you lose everything. The other player can loot you and that’s that. This makes creating a defendable fortress essential in which to store spare gear that you can retrieve after your many, many deaths. This game has provided me with some of my most terrifying moments in a video game, all thanks to the other psychopaths on the servers with me.

A quick overview of the progression. You harvest stone nodes and trees or wood piles for wood, stone, sulfur, and metal ore. You build a stone axe to increase your harvest rate, and then a hut in which to hide come night time…when the world gets near pitch black. You have a torch, but by lighting it you essentially just paint a target on your back. You need to build a door in addition to just the hut, and then you have a semblance of safety. You gradually increase your raw material stockpile, make a furnace, a larger hut, metal harvesting tools, a bow and arrow, and then you need to go from hunted to hunter. When I started, there were zombies in main hubs. Now they have transitioned to temporary mutated animals with an as of yet unannounced replacement for those in the future. These special monsters drop blueprints you need to progress further, making things such as handguns, ammo, Kevlar armor, military grade weaponry and plastic explosives.

I never made it this far on a standard server. Hell, I never made it past the making a little hut phase. The servers were too overpopulated, the harvest nodes had yet to be optimized to account for this and the map was too small to handle this many people in any way but absolute chaos. Once I gave up on the main servers and found my way over to the modded servers, my enjoyment factor climbed quickly. The servers went from having 100+ people on at all times to hovering around 50 at most, for the servers I chose. I feel with the current map, 50 is about all it can support without requiring all out war 24/7.

Once on a new server a friend and I had carved out our little nook in the world, created an ever growing fortress and started stockpiling blueprints, gunpowder, ammo, food, and weapons in a way that would make the best doom day preppers proud. Now violence is always enhanced in video games, but something I have learned from Rust is that given a situation where a few pieces of wood can mean the difference between surviving and not surviving, I am totally willing to beat another player’s head in with a rock to make sure I walk away with that piece of wood. I’m also willing to hold players at gunpoint if they approach too quickly or try to move in a way I don’t like. I am also willing to take shots from on top of a tower with a rudimentary sniper rifle at a near naked player who came too close to the field in which my heavily fortified house was built. My sociopath switch may or may not be triggered by this game.

The game is early in alpha and has met an extremely high success rate for being in such an early build. The game keeps getting better with every update, although we are currently experience a drought of updates because of a MASSIVE rebuild in the works, rewriting most of the code from the ground up. I can’t wait to see the re-release in the next few months, the game has good bones to build on and I expect great things for its future.

There have been teases of upcoming additions, ranging from attack helicopters to electricity to alarm systems…it’s extremely ambitious to put it lightly. Personally, my friends and I have simpler wish lists. We feel the game plays its best at the primitive level, and should at least start with that. I’d like to see different bows available, improvised clubs, swords and shields. The ability to dig would make moats a valid option for home defense, and the ability to take out metal doors and walls without the use of high explosives would make it less of a yes/no as to whether someone can get into your house. This would also mean we need more building materials to supplement the current wood or metal, different strengths to make it so the battering ram may get through the wall, but is an hour of playtime clicking the button worth it?

Being in early alpha, the game definitely has its bugs. They fix them, but some online players, being the fine human beings that they are, decide to break them and create workarounds and hacks as fast as the bugs can be fixed. On a lot of servers, hackers that can phase through walls, insta-lock for headshots, steal possessions out of your pack and a plethora of other cheap moves run rampant. They are fighting them and constantly looking for new, better systems with which to fight them. Generally when I run across hackers I either try to enjoy the game elsewhere, or I find a new server. It’s a short term fix until they can build in their long term fixes.

I hope the game continues to get better and better, and I will keep dropping by as the updates come. If you are looking for a great game that brings out the inner mass murderer and recluse, Rust is definitely for you. It’s definitely worth the $20 asking price, and I anticipate with their newest patch in the next few months, it will go from feeling like an early alpha to a well polished beta.

Rust can currently be found HERE on Steam.

Thanks for following!

-Mac

--Sociopathic Score--

In a world where you are naked, scared, and without anything to your name…your inner sociopath shines brightly.

--Sophomoric Score--

You do start stark naked, 3d modeled junk and all

--Strategic Score--

It’s survival of the fittest and most creative. Coming up with new ways to build given the limited options that prevent others from breaking in and stealing your stuff…it’s kept me up at nights.

It's all fun and games until a friend takes an arrow in the stomach.