DayZ

> Join first server on first life
> Loot a few buildings
> Stab a zombie
> Oh ♥♥♥♥ the sun is setting
> Build a fire to stay warm
> Two heavily armed german guys appear out of thin air. Offer me food and water
> Yes please
> Start violently throwing up and pass out
> Wake up handcuffed and without clothes
> "You wont be getting out of this alive" -evil german guy
> They cure me
> Proceed to feed me more food and water
> Pass out again, wake up
> Get beaten to death
10/10 would recommend

Official servers are sadly a joke, LOADED with hackers. Dayz needs to take this MUCH more seriously, buy hacks online and then reverse engineer them to defeat the hacks. Otherwise a terrific game to play solo or with a small group.

This Game is tedious and time consuming. Most of my playtime has been spent in queue waiting to get into a server. However, it offers a unique experience not offered by any other survival game out there. U can play it so many ways. My personal favorite is playing on adventure servers and trying to make a friend or two before I leave the coast and gear up. If I'm in the mood I'll betray some one and eat them as a snack. If I'm feeling froggy I'll kill everybody on sight in hopes that they uninstall it as I have.
My favorite map was Namalsk. One night I met a dude from another country named Antonio. We had the sickest run together. Killed a bunch of people. Hunted animals, fished, and filled our bellies by the fire while talking about how the world is lately and just random stuff... until he was taken from me. He died right next to me mid sentence. I'll never forget that run tho bro R.I.P. I wonder if after he died, he was staring at his screen wondering how I made out. I killed the dude that got him. I talked mad $h!4 as I hunted him through the trees and into a nearby building, because I was genuinely pissed. After killing the guy, I took Antonio's Mosin and went deeper south. Alone there, I got more loot, hunted more animals, did some fishing and warmed up by a fire. But it wasn't the same without the buddy I had made. Later, I ultimately died of an infection after getting bit by a wolf. I died cold and alone under a starry sky.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☑ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10
good luck not getting shot

> Negotiate indentured servitude with a fresh spawn
> Handcuff him and make him clear buildings for me
> Slow drip him equipment for doing a good job
> Set him free
> Adventure together for an hour
> He kills me with a rock
> Run into him again (he has my gun now)
> Now i'm the slave :(
10/10 they grow up so fast

Lets get serious, is this game when playing on vanilla servers fun or perfect? No.
However, having spent over 2300hrs on dayz with 99% of my time spent on DZSA Modded servers i highly recommend this game.
I've met and made friends with people on modded servers who have been my friends irl for over 7 years now. I've spent countless hours building bases, raiding bases, taking part in massive sever games, force feeding people bleach, surrounding bases with landmines and bear traps etc.

Once you've learnt the in and outs of the game its very easy to play and you can completely loose yourself for hours, find some Youtube videos to get the basics and you'll be a pro in no time.
On sale or not its well worth the money.

first impression of someone who only started playing relatively recently with most of their time on the Namalsk map
DayZ is- first and foremost -a game that is most fun with social interaction, whether it be from friends or random people you encounter in the game. If you have a griup of people to play the game with or are willing to wait to get into the most popular servers that encourage soft RP (playing characters, etc.) then you'll probably have a fun time. The issue with the game comes from the actual gameplay after this point. Social interaction and fun is for the earlygame of a run, once you start running to higher-loot areas farther from spawn towns, people will not be friendly to you anymore. If you're seen, you'll be shot on sight. This is the core gameplay loop of the game: talk to some fresh-spawn players, get to spawn towns, find food and supplies, run for 15-20 minutes to a later-game area, find better weapons, fight, die. This loop is compelling admittedly because of the nature of the game, there will always be tension while being in a late-game area or high-danger location, and this adrenaline keeps the game interesting even when nobody else is around. Now comes the big issue, on most maps that aren't modded, and all of the official maps, there is no endgame. This gameplay loop has no ultimate goal that you can survive for, you just loot and die effectively. Modded maps or custom maps- such as Namalsk -have a bit more that you can accomplish, but it still takes a large time investment to even reach this point and a bit of luck. This lack of an endgame goal on most maps is a bit of a problem, especially since these maps tend to be the larger ones. Overall, if you really just enjoy PVP and going for long lives on servers, this shouldn't be an issue for you.
I think the next most important part to discuss is the features of the game, as not every server uses the exact same features and works a bit differently, it even depends on what map you play.
For starters, the game has a basebuilding feature that many popular servers are very divided about. Not every server has it, and servers that do have it and don't control it properly tend to be harder to get items on, as loot is hoarded in bases and messes up spawns for items. Personally, the gameplay loop is a lot more interesting without bases. Cars are another feature that some maps have and others don't. These provide a faster- and louder -method of getting around the larger maps, and are decently hard to actually get, these work a lot better than bases but are still a bit out-of-place in DayZ's loop on most maps in my opinion.
Second is the survival elements, which are actually very well made with a few small exceptions. The game has three meters that you need to worry about, and depending on the server, this can be brought down to two, these being hunger, thirst, and temperature. Most maps don't have lethal temperature mechanics, so this meter is a bit useless for the most part on those maps, but on other maps, namely Namalsk, this adds a challenging survival element for the earlygame and midgame, as you won't have good enough clothing to ignore the meter yet and will need to use the game's crafting system or firestarters like matches to make fires for yourself to avoid dying of the cold. This is also how you defrost frozen food on these cold maps, which is another element to make survival harder. On top of food management, your food and water also needs to be unfrozen to eat or drink it safely, or consume it at all. This is all to say that the survival on the harder maps tends to be more engaging and be more of an important factor, as it's much harder. The game has some issues with its survival elements in some areas, namely: you will not know some of the more niche interactions with the environment without being told. There are some simple examples of this that you can learn from yourself, like human meat making you go insane and laugh like a maniac (giving away your position), but there are also things like frostbite (which shows up as a "sick" icon on your HUD) that has a negligible effect and is hard to identify as a new player. Additionally, things like the difference between different fishing rods and hooks and the difference between dried, boiled, baked, rotten, and burnt food- the final two of these items not actually being inedible like one may assume. Broken legs are another thing that new players will have no idea how to handle, as the method to craft item required to walk on a broken leg (the splint) is not immediately obvious. Players will go unconscious from not having a splint, and will have to wait a MINIMUM of an hour, and maybe longer, without the splint item. Most survival elements can be picked up from just playing, but a small few are probably a bit too convoluted or obscure for new players in my opinion.
Third is the gunplay and combat, which is one of this game's largest strong points. Before talking about guns, it's important to mention that DayZ has a variety of melee weapons (either blunt or bladed) that are surprisingly effective at killing zombies and stunning players. Blunt weapons are better at stunning and are even capable of knocking players unconscious, while bladed weapons can bleed and are more equipped for stealth killing zombies, damaging players outright, and starting fires. DayZ features a large variety of guns which can be found in higher-tier loot zones depending on the power of the weapon. Earlygame weapons are weak and you will often have few bullets for them, but they can still be deadly as players will no have any sort of protective gear from bullets at this point and can be killed very quickly. Midgame weapons are more powerful, and this is where rifles start becoming accessible. These weapons can kill freshly-spawned players with no issue, and are more equipped to kill highly-geared players, whereas earlygame weapons have almost no chance of killing geared players due to protective gear. Lategame gear is almost exclusively high-capacity, high-power, high-customization rifles and snipers. These guns can do serious damage to geared players and can shred through lightly-geared players easily. They also will have a higher chance of knocking players unconscious if they're geared compared to weaker guns, as they can cause more blood loss through protective gear and do more damage. These have extensive options for scopes and attachments, and will have a surplus of ammo to be used. Finally is the endgame guns, which on some maps and loot systems don't even really exist. These can be modded weapons or weapons that are extremely powerful and are locked behind some sort of endgame journey or objective such as Namalsk's space-suit and alien planet exploration. These are almost always huge time investments and are quite frankly overpowered weapons to reward people for surviving a gauntlet of challenges. Not to say you're unkillable, you're very much still vulnerable, as you'll most likely attract many players with the sound of a powerful weapon. Overall, the gunplay is very well made and has a good natural progression. Guns feel powerful and dangerous, and systems like cleaning your gun to prevent jamming are very effective at keeping even high-gear players on their toes.
All of that sounds very good, and it very much is, but the game also has many large issues. First: the game is almost never updated with bugfixes, or major content in general. I think enough time can be spent on a variety of maps to nullify this, but it's worth noting. Second, the game is BUGGY. It has tons of visual bugs, audio bugs, clipping issues, and connection issues. The game also lacks VERTICAL AUDIO, you CANNOT tell if someone is above or below you in the year 2024. Finally, the game's official servers are overrun with hackers and connecting to community servers generally just doesn't work sometimes.
Very worth playing if you enjoy the genre or this sounds fun.