First Impressions: Unturned (PC)

Remember that article I wrote a couple of weeks back?  You know, the one where I talk about the number of Steam games on early access that fall under the "early access massive multiplayer online open world zombie apocalypse survival first person shooter" category?  There is a new game (new as of July 7th, 2014) that was released for free that popped up on the Steam front page a few days ago, and because I have almost no willpower and 640Gigs of spare hard drive space, I figured I could spare 200Mb.

Logo courtesy of the r/unturned sub-reddit

No, Unturned does not even have a "proper" logo.  Well, it does have a kind-of-logo that comes from the Steam store page, but it is not as interesting.

See.  I told you it was not at all interesting.  The game however is fairly interesting.  It reminds me of a mix between DayZ, Proteus and Minecraft; except that I have never played Minecraft (I know, I know), but I at least know what the game looks like so I feel somewhat educated enough to make that assumption.

But let us break down these comparisons.  DayZ:  In Unturned, you start out the game completely naked and depending on the difficulty setting, you either start out empty handed, or you start out with a juice box, candy and a flashlight.  In one playthrough (I died) I did manage to find some clothes at a laundromat, then I found a gun which I was able to use a couple of times before being mauled to death by a zombie.  Zombies also tend to congregate near objects of civilization be it a lighthouse, small towns, military installations or seemingly abandoned beach blankets and lounge chairs.  If the zombies do not kill you, over time, you become hungry and thirsty and I am assuming that you will starve to death or die from dehydration.  If you jump off from a high enough distance you can break your leg or if you step in a bear trap (that you just happen to recently set yourself) you will bleed out until you are dead.  See, a lot like DayZ.  The zombies are even attracted to the sound of gunfire, which is very annoying, although I guess somewhat realistic, depending on which zombie universe you are the most attached to.

Dying is something that I have become very good at in Unturned as well, regardless of the difficulty setting.  Even on "Easy" each hit from a single zombie does 10% damage, which does not seem like a lot unless you are being chased/mauled by a horde of zombies.  That is unless you happen to find a body of water to swim out into, in which case they will simply hang out in the shoulder deep water and follow your every move.  On an upnote, you are capable of swimming indefinitely, even with those stubby blocky arms.  

So how is the game like Proteus then?  Well, if the island in Proteus were populated with buildings and zombies, then I guess that comparison would make sense.  There is music in Unturned, albeit it is not interactive in the way that the music interacts with the environment or as peaceful or as calming.  But it is there and everything is all block-like.  So there is that.  Maybe I am just reaching for straws here, but that was what I briefly thought right before I was shown that I acted better as zombie food than a naked dude safely running around an island community.

So Unturned is still in alpha-release although the developer Nelson Sexton with Smartly Dressed Games does seem to update frequently and the game is free to download and play.  There is a pay option which could be seen as a way of helping to fund the game.  The $5 one time "Permanent Gold Upgrade" gets you your name in gold in chat, extra customizing options for your character (hair, skin, facial expressions), access to special servers [extra loot drops, double experience, suit and shades (clothing options)] and a sleeker UI; if that is your type of thing.

You know, for a game and article about zombies, I sure have done a great job not including many screen shots of zombies.  If that was something you have noticed, then I leave you with the following image of my last play/die through and encounter with a group/horde of zombies shortly before they mauled me to death.

I would be lying if I were to say that I have not become just a little frustrated with not being able to often survive long enough to pick up a weapon.  The last three games I played I was killed by no less than three zombies while trying to pick up Playthrough 1) Baseball bat, 2)Crowbar and 3) what turned out to be nails.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I am only playing a single player game, which might be because I have not figured out how to log into/host my own online game.  There is plenty of time to figure these things out of course, as long as I do not get eaten in the meantime.

Good day everybody!



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Touch My World With Your Fingertips

DayZ and the Unfinished Survival Genre

The survivalist horror genre, if it is indeed a genre, seems to be a big thing right now, either that or I just happen to like the genre enough to notice games cropping up here and there to think that it is becoming "a thing" in the video game industry.  And just to clarify, I am referring to "open world survival" games that center around your character surviving out in the big bad scary post-apocalyptic world where you have to scavenge supplies in order to survive from either zombies or the more deadly, other humans.  I do not plan on touching on the forebears of the survival horror genre (Sweet Home, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, Silent Hill), so aside from their obvious name dropping, I will not cover those games here.

The games that I do want to cover are, coincidentally enough, are all "Early Access Games" through Steam.  Before I get down to it all, I want to mention that the only game that I will be bringing up here that I have played is DayZ as it was the first game I heard about in this genre back when it was still a mod for Arma II; yes, I intentionally made a hipsteresque comment.

To date, I have only managed to put in about two hours into DayZ, thirty of those minutes I put into the game just before writing this article.  The fact that I have not put as many hours into this game has made me a little sad.  Ultimately, the game that is available to play, albeit an early alpha build of the game, is not very fun.

I understand that the game is based heavily off of a mod for another game and that the game is played on one of dozens of servers with anywhere between zero and 30-50 other people.  In a game where the goal is to survive both zombies and humans, people are going to be very competitive.  In a recent podcast of The Patch, it was "reported" that there were certain aspects that were broken, such as people server hopping after looting an area and becoming overly powerful with respect to people, like me, just signing on.  

Somehow, not normal behavior for a zombie.

To date though, I have not run across any other survivors.  In my last playthrough, I ran across a total of four zombies.  No, make that five.  The first one beat/ate the crap out of me while I tried to climb a ladder up to a roof.  I later threw myself off the roof rather than go about a slow death bleeding out.  One zombie ran through the wall of a house and became stuck in the floor.  The other three mobbed me one after the other after I came out of a house.  The first I clubbed to "death" within a couple of hits with a massive wrench I recently found; the second took way too many hits and I then thought that I had to "target" the head, but that was not the case; the third kept chasing me into the house I had recently vacated before I could manage to close the door behind me.

I must admit though that the player is warned before each playthrough that the game is not complete.  The disclaimer states that "This game is in Alpha and will be for some time.  This means you will experience bugs, unfinished features, problematic design decision, and many more things that disrupt your game experience.  We will be working with the community to fix these. . . Above all, please remember that this game is not finished, and is a work in progress."  I think I may just give DayZ some time to work things out and check back every few months to see how the development is going.  Steam even recently updated their FAQs for Early Access games (possibly due to the Earth: Year 2066 debacle) to state that "You should be aware that some teams will be unable to 'finish' their game. So you should only buy an Early Access game if you are excited about playing it in its current state."

This now brings me to the other games that I did not mention, but as I did mention, there seems to be a fair amount that fit within the DayZ model of open world survival and most importantly "not finished."

• 7 Days to Die
• Beasts of Prey
• Dead State
• The Dead Linger
• The Forest
• The Nether
• Planet Explorers
• Project Zomboid
• Rust
• Starbound
• Starforge
• The Stomping Land

A lot of these games tout their "procedural worlds," which makes me wonder if that means that the world is being constantly created while the game is being played and can be different on each playthrough or for different people, which is kind of what it is, in laymans terms.  Crafting is also a very big aspect in almost all of these games.  Be it crafting weapons, shelter, bandages or cooking food, "creating" is a big aspect here.  I cannot tell from the trailers of the above games if eating/drinking is or will be as important as it is in DayZ, where you can actually die from starvation and dehydration, but I would not be surprised if maintaining your health is another part of these games.

This looks to apparently be "a thing," an idea I thought about in the last couple of days due to Extra Credits' posting about the effects of future games from a generation who have grown up on Minecraft.  These series of games just might be the link between massive worlds where you build stuff to survive and the Left 4 Dead zombie action game.

But, they do not pay me to make assumptions.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

And I Believe In The Promised Land