Halloween Timewaster
I'm going to do something I've never done on a Friday Timewaster, I'm going to recommend a game that's not free. Not even currently on sale, as a matter of fact. [Actually, I just noticed that it is on sale for Halloween at a 55% discount. Grab it while it's cheap! - Ed.] But according to Steam, over the last few months this game has absorbed well over 200 hours of my time. I think that's worth a nod, even if it'll cost you a few bucks to try it out.
7 Days to Die may be the best zombie game ever made. It's also the best post-apocalypse survival game and one of the best sandbox builder games. Considering the flood of games in all three of those genres over the last several years, I realize that may sound like hyperbole, so allow me to elaborate a bit.
Imagine this: you wake up in the middle of a forest clearing. You've a can of beans, a bottle of water and a bandage. You're in your underwear. None of this is pointing to your having a good day. Then you hear a growl and hiss from a nearby bush, and some dude who looks like a wolf chewed him up -- three weeks ago -- lurches toward you with ill intent. You've several options, of course, but I recommend flight.
And that's exactly what you'll do at first. Run, hide, and try not to be seen by hordes of undead intent on eating your face for breakfast. Heavily inspired by the excellent and highly successful AMC series The Walking Dead, 7 Days to Die lets you discover if you've got what it takes to survive the zombie apocalypse. There are many similar games, but here are a few reasons why this one is different.
1) Procedural terrain generation. In English, it means the world is infinite and unique for every player (or server, if you play multiplayer). The further you run in a single direction, the more world it generates. The terrain may change: desert, mountains, forest, urban... there are many types of "biomes," all presenting their own challenges. You can run and you can hide, but you'll never, ever reach the end. This creates a constant sense of wonder and exploration, as you push on to discover what's just over the next hill. Usually it's just more hills. But on occasion, you'll stumble upon opportunity -- like a Wal-Mart full of zombies who haven't had their morning face-snack yet. (Hey, it's the post-apocalypse; opportunity ain't what it used to be.)
2) Destructible and deformable. If you can see it, stand on it or piss on it, you can destroy it. Buildings, cars, the ground... anything can be broken down, given enough time and the right tools. Those tools range from stone axes that you make from grass, sticks and rocks, all the way up to TNT. That latter can be most useful if you find a deep cave with lots of exposed ore and minerals. Blasting is much faster than chipping away at it with a pickax. And you'll need lots of ore and minerals if you want to build anything more substantial than a wood hut. Not to mention gunpowder. Just be careful with that blasting, as you can easily collapse the cave on yourself. That's the great part about this virtual world: it (mostly) obeys the laws of physics. Which leads to...
3) Buildable. Like Minecraft, you can build anything you like, provided you can scavenge the resources. In a recent server game I played with Churt, Vizigoth and their brother Knotheadicus (yeah, really), we built a 30,000 square foot fortress. It was composed of concrete-and-steel with a spike-filled moat, a triple-lock gatehouse, a three-story central keep with firing points and an escape tunnel. But even that can be overrun by a big enough horde if you're not paying attention to details. In short, if you can dream it up, you can almost certainly make it happen, given enough time and resources.
4) Crafty. You'll have to scavenge parts to build things. Useful things, such as guns and the ammo for them, as well as more primitive weapons. Most importantly, you'll have to get a steady source of food. That bottle of water and canned food won't get you far. Hunting is one possibility: rabbits, deer, pigs, even bear. But it ain't easy and can end up a hand-to-mouth existence, especially if you're playing alone. There's some canned food scattered about for scavenging in grocery stores, cabins, apartments, et al, but much of it's already been cleaned out. Apocalypse, remember? Growing a garden might be a better idea... if you can find the seeds to get it started.
5) Terror. Who doesn't enjoy a little crawling fear now and again? If you adjust your screen brightness and gamma correctly, the night is dark. I mean out-the-country, bottom-of-a-well, can't see your hand in front of your face pitch freakin' black. Of course if you can survive long enough, you'll eventually be able build that awesome fortress with spotlights everywhere, but at first you'll be huddled on the rooftop of an abandoned building, clutching your guttering torch, unable to see more than 30 feet away as you listen to things shuffling about in the darkness and making unnatural sounds. Turn off the lights in your computer room and your lizard brain won't know it isn't real, especially if you have surround sound. If you camp close to a dead city at night and crank the sound up, you'll swear you can hear whispering voices and a child crying in the distance, just barely audible over the sound of the wind... (Guess what I'm doing for Halloween?)
6) Accomplishment. This is what is missing in most games today, in my opinion. Designed for the ADD generation, modern videogames tend to cater to the instant gratification addiction of the kids who got participation trophies for intramural soccer. The result is an empty feeling, a sense that it's all just monumentally pointless. 7 Days to Die makes you work for your successes. There'll be nothing handed to you, and one slip can easily get you killed. Panicking will get you killed. Not paying attention will get you killed. Overconfidence? Yep, killed. And on every seventh day, you'll get to find out if your defenses are adequate are not. Let's just say the zombies are on a weekly PMS cycle.
The game is still in development, which will be the case basically forever. That's because they just keep adding stuff. Motorbikes were recently added, (if you can figure out how to build one), and cars will be coming in the future. The next patch promises dismemberment (for when just putting that zombie down isn't entertaining enough), revised gathering and repair systems, and detailed weather and environmental effects. It's always getting better, and that's the sign of a good game.
While the single-player is loads of fun and I play it regularly, multiplayer can be even more so with the right people. I suggest you avoid public servers, as they're full of assholes and teenagers. There's a friends & family server run by Churt, (or maybe it's at Vizigoth's cave at the moment; I forget). If you decide you like the game, drop me an email; if I know you (as I do most of our readers) or you come with a recommendation from someone I know personally, we can set you up on the server. Because there ain't nothing gives you a warm-n-fuzzy like dozens of zombies dancing in a withering crossfire.
__
7 Days to Die may be the best zombie game ever made. It's also the best post-apocalypse survival game and one of the best sandbox builder games. Considering the flood of games in all three of those genres over the last several years, I realize that may sound like hyperbole, so allow me to elaborate a bit.
Imagine this: you wake up in the middle of a forest clearing. You've a can of beans, a bottle of water and a bandage. You're in your underwear. None of this is pointing to your having a good day. Then you hear a growl and hiss from a nearby bush, and some dude who looks like a wolf chewed him up -- three weeks ago -- lurches toward you with ill intent. You've several options, of course, but I recommend flight.
And that's exactly what you'll do at first. Run, hide, and try not to be seen by hordes of undead intent on eating your face for breakfast. Heavily inspired by the excellent and highly successful AMC series The Walking Dead, 7 Days to Die lets you discover if you've got what it takes to survive the zombie apocalypse. There are many similar games, but here are a few reasons why this one is different.
1) Procedural terrain generation. In English, it means the world is infinite and unique for every player (or server, if you play multiplayer). The further you run in a single direction, the more world it generates. The terrain may change: desert, mountains, forest, urban... there are many types of "biomes," all presenting their own challenges. You can run and you can hide, but you'll never, ever reach the end. This creates a constant sense of wonder and exploration, as you push on to discover what's just over the next hill. Usually it's just more hills. But on occasion, you'll stumble upon opportunity -- like a Wal-Mart full of zombies who haven't had their morning face-snack yet. (Hey, it's the post-apocalypse; opportunity ain't what it used to be.)
2) Destructible and deformable. If you can see it, stand on it or piss on it, you can destroy it. Buildings, cars, the ground... anything can be broken down, given enough time and the right tools. Those tools range from stone axes that you make from grass, sticks and rocks, all the way up to TNT. That latter can be most useful if you find a deep cave with lots of exposed ore and minerals. Blasting is much faster than chipping away at it with a pickax. And you'll need lots of ore and minerals if you want to build anything more substantial than a wood hut. Not to mention gunpowder. Just be careful with that blasting, as you can easily collapse the cave on yourself. That's the great part about this virtual world: it (mostly) obeys the laws of physics. Which leads to...
3) Buildable. Like Minecraft, you can build anything you like, provided you can scavenge the resources. In a recent server game I played with Churt, Vizigoth and their brother Knotheadicus (yeah, really), we built a 30,000 square foot fortress. It was composed of concrete-and-steel with a spike-filled moat, a triple-lock gatehouse, a three-story central keep with firing points and an escape tunnel. But even that can be overrun by a big enough horde if you're not paying attention to details. In short, if you can dream it up, you can almost certainly make it happen, given enough time and resources.
4) Crafty. You'll have to scavenge parts to build things. Useful things, such as guns and the ammo for them, as well as more primitive weapons. Most importantly, you'll have to get a steady source of food. That bottle of water and canned food won't get you far. Hunting is one possibility: rabbits, deer, pigs, even bear. But it ain't easy and can end up a hand-to-mouth existence, especially if you're playing alone. There's some canned food scattered about for scavenging in grocery stores, cabins, apartments, et al, but much of it's already been cleaned out. Apocalypse, remember? Growing a garden might be a better idea... if you can find the seeds to get it started.
5) Terror. Who doesn't enjoy a little crawling fear now and again? If you adjust your screen brightness and gamma correctly, the night is dark. I mean out-the-country, bottom-of-a-well, can't see your hand in front of your face pitch freakin' black. Of course if you can survive long enough, you'll eventually be able build that awesome fortress with spotlights everywhere, but at first you'll be huddled on the rooftop of an abandoned building, clutching your guttering torch, unable to see more than 30 feet away as you listen to things shuffling about in the darkness and making unnatural sounds. Turn off the lights in your computer room and your lizard brain won't know it isn't real, especially if you have surround sound. If you camp close to a dead city at night and crank the sound up, you'll swear you can hear whispering voices and a child crying in the distance, just barely audible over the sound of the wind... (Guess what I'm doing for Halloween?)
6) Accomplishment. This is what is missing in most games today, in my opinion. Designed for the ADD generation, modern videogames tend to cater to the instant gratification addiction of the kids who got participation trophies for intramural soccer. The result is an empty feeling, a sense that it's all just monumentally pointless. 7 Days to Die makes you work for your successes. There'll be nothing handed to you, and one slip can easily get you killed. Panicking will get you killed. Not paying attention will get you killed. Overconfidence? Yep, killed. And on every seventh day, you'll get to find out if your defenses are adequate are not. Let's just say the zombies are on a weekly PMS cycle.
The game is still in development, which will be the case basically forever. That's because they just keep adding stuff. Motorbikes were recently added, (if you can figure out how to build one), and cars will be coming in the future. The next patch promises dismemberment (for when just putting that zombie down isn't entertaining enough), revised gathering and repair systems, and detailed weather and environmental effects. It's always getting better, and that's the sign of a good game.
While the single-player is loads of fun and I play it regularly, multiplayer can be even more so with the right people. I suggest you avoid public servers, as they're full of assholes and teenagers. There's a friends & family server run by Churt, (or maybe it's at Vizigoth's cave at the moment; I forget). If you decide you like the game, drop me an email; if I know you (as I do most of our readers) or you come with a recommendation from someone I know personally, we can set you up on the server. Because there ain't nothing gives you a warm-n-fuzzy like dozens of zombies dancing in a withering crossfire.
__
Labels: wasting away...
posted by Jar(egg)head at 00:01
1 Comments:
The friends and family server is currently off as we had stopped playing it for awhile. However, with alpha 13 coming out in the next 2 weeks I will start a new game when it arrives. I can restart the other one if there is enough interest. The company rep on the forums actually said it would be out in November, but they have alluded to early rather than late November, so I'll try and be positive. I'm positive the glass is half empty.
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