GAMING BLESSING BUT ALSO A CURSE

of the first games to show real promise in the zombie/ survival on PC is finally being released.

DayZ is described as a gritty, authentic, open- world survival horror hybrid- MMPO game in which players follow a single goal: to survive in the harsh post- apocalyptic landscape as long as they can.

Back in 2013 that sounded amazing. It originally began as a completely free mod created on the bones of Arma 2, a military simulation game.

About a year into production, it rereleased as a fully- fledged earlyaccess game. Sigh, early access.

Accompanying all these games comes the warning which I will abridge here. This game is early access alpha. Please do not purchase it unless you want to actively support development, and are prepared for serious issues. If this is not a massive red flag for consumers, I don’t know what is. But I fell for it.

The premise was amazing and at the time, unique. Well they finally announced that it will be released some time next year, so by then it will be a five- year- old game.

Depending on what you read, this is a blessing but also a curse. By all accounts it’s still not finished. I haven’t played for years because I gave up the idea that it would be released. But I still can’t help but wonder how much of these earlyaccess games are deliberate malicious rip- offs, or a bunch of truly passionate people who think big, but can’t code to save their lives.