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Deadside players will commiserate over a dead dog and then stab youEvery dog has his DayZ
Every dog has his DayZ
I forgot the name ofDeadsidewithin seconds of closing it. Even looking at its store page raises… not alarm bells, exactly, but some negative assumptions. It looks a lot like a lot of other, not very good games fighting for a place in the ultra-hostile, grim Eastern European PvP shooter leagues.
But what is it really? Well. It’sDayZagain.
Players appear in random, probably forested spots on an large island, carrying almost nothing and with no clear instructions but the implied understanding that someone will definitely try to kill you before long, so you’d better look for weapons and supplies. Food and water are concerns, although not as immediately pressing as finding a gun in one of the scattered villages, farmhouses, and derelict cars.
Not Chernarus big, but still pretty big.
There are no zombies this time, so finding things isn’t too difficult. I was glad for this, because while in theory it’s tense to face a hostile human player with nothing but a pocket knife, in practice you’re so utterly helpless that any early tension is meaningless because there’s nothing really at stake. And on the flip side, I’ve always found the universal omnicide of these games deeply disappointing. Killing starting players is pointless because they have nothing on them, but of course that’s all most players do. But maybeDeadsideis different? Maybe this is a good place to be not a dick?
As I ran around the midnight woods, fearful of every shadow, things got off to a surprisingly good start when I said hello to the global chat and someone announced that their dog had died.
Guns that fire shots. Open field shootouts with a shotgun are unusually enjoyable.
Then I found a machine pistol at a roadblock. Two, in fact. And another player ran across the road behind me. I had a clear shot but left it, since he probably didn’t have a gun and I saw no need to shoot him, and in fact why not stand back and let him have a gun and we can oh, I see. Oh, he’s stabbing me.
Despite whatTF2has told us, a sneaky pocket knife is no match for a depressed writer with an uzi. I shot him and moved on, annoyed at my now low health. You can carry almost nothing in Deadside until you find roomier clothes or a bag, so there was nothing for it but to jog to the next group of buildings.
There’s a strangely voyeuristic appeal to watching people fight from a distance.
Nights are very dark, but thankfully not literally pitch black like the idiotic ones in early DayZ.
More importantly, nobody wanted to join my band. I offered to pay for the drums, and even freestyled some lyrics in the global chat. But only one person asked to meet up with me somewhere, not even answering when I asked whether they could play bass. This was clearly a trap.
I got shot at some point, stumbling around in the dark. You start with a lighter but it’s basically a “I’m new! Come and shoot me!” beacon. I felt nothing when some unseen gunman killed me. And then the next time, I was that unseen gunman, panicking as someone came into the house I was in, emptying a shotgun into their hips. I apologised over chat but got no response. Forming a band is a lot harder than I’d thought.
Finally, I spotted two players, casually strolling down a main road together. I tried to identify to them over chat that I was friendly and coming out, without giving away my position. No response. Well, okay. I followed them at a distance, offering to help. Nothing.
You can just about see the two bots ahead. It’s a nice day. I’d go for a walk too.
That’s pretty much how Deadside went for me from then on. I’d find a gun or two, try to be friendly, and have to shoot people who ignored my overtures and tried to stab me. The shooting is pretty decent - I particularly appreciate that the double-barrelled shotgun is a workable option at medium range, and the source of most of my kills. Pistols too are fairly deadly, and I had some great shootouts against players and bots alike that I would have lost if I hadn’t kept my cool. But the big question is how to get past the early stages of stumbling around in the dark repeatedly dying and passing over piles of resources you can’t yet carry, and whether it’s actually fun to keep playing after that stage.
On my last and longest life, I’d shot several bots and a couple of players with a pistol, shotgun, and then found an SMG. Not only did I find a duffel bag, opening up a revolutionary seven inventory slots, but I then found an axe in the corner of a field.
The impossible, game-changing technology of a sack.
I got excited, because who knows how important an axe could become? I asked the chat, and of course got no answer. So I asked myself: is this important? Is this how we get wood in the game? Have I stumbled across the next step in oh never mind, it’s crashed. It crashed several times, and each time it locked me out of the server I’d been in with an error message. Welp.
Deadside is actually quite solid, considering how easy it is for Dayz-alikes to fall apart simply through lack of players even if they’re good. It’s quite atmospheric and even pretty in an alpine sort of way. I quite liked the shooting, and it was easy enough to find guns to allay the frustration. I was able to get started and survive for a bit without having to waste time starting over and over again, although that could of course change as the player base grows, and the obsessive players study the most efficient paths through the design and eventually trammel everyone down the same narrow path as every other online shooter if they’re to stand a chance.
Being not a dick rating:I wasn’t personally targeted, and the general level of abuse seemed relatively low. But there’s little room for much beyond random murder, leaving us at a dissatisfying 3/10. Rising to 5/10 for the dog thing.
Deadside is available now viaSteam Early Accessfor £15.50/€16.80/$20.
