Unturned - Low rez DayZ with more crafting

[DaveYanakov]

Has anyone tried this title yet? It looks like all of the good stuff from DayZ with more focus on performance and gameplay while dropping some of the Arma engine complexity. Free to play so I would be down for giving it a playthrough.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/304930/

[FlowerChild]

I tried it out briefly last week, but man, it really pushes the bounds of amateur :)

Couldn't handle more than ten minutes or so. My understanding is that it's a hobby project of a 16 year old, and while it's very cool that he's doing something so ambitious, well, it really does feel like it's the hobby project of a 16 year old.

[DaveYanakov]

Fair enough =) Thank you for saving my time

[erikdk321]

It really reminds me of the online multiplayer game Roblox if anyone remembers that :)
I have seen a video on it, and it really doesn't seem that amazing.

[Toastman500]

I've played about 30 hours of it, it's really just a much more responsive version of DayZ with the ability to build structures and such. It is in very early release stage and it recieves fairly frequent updates, and while the first person, inventory management and weapon discipline is some of the best I've ever come across, the game is obviously unbalanced in certain aspects and becomes incredibly easy once you know what you're doing. It's balanced for multiplayer right now which makes sense since that's what DayZ is for, but once you have a few certain items the difficulty jumps from 'having fun scavenging' to 'well lets build a giant house and get every item in the game'

Pros:

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When you start you are naked, only have your fists and can only hold 4 items, making finding backpacks incredibly essential. Guns are pretty balanced as well, they're somewhat rare, as well as the magazines and ammo for them. The really cool thing about them is that each magazine is it's own item, no more infinite magazines that are just limiting how much ammo you have, and you have to manually reload, which typically results in you dropping the empty mag on the ground. Some guns even have a safety, so there's sometimes that fear of picking up a gun and trying to shoot someone only to realize the safety is on. Also the sights and scopes work just like real life where only the scope zooms in and the rest of the world remains the same. Needless to say I really enjoy how guns work in this, they feel like very realistic, complicated machines of death that unless properly handled can be useless.

This is also the only game that has had a leaning system that I've actually used, and it's pretty balanced for multiplayer even.

The building system is pretty interesting, harvesting enough items to actually build things takes a while and feels meaningful, and you actually have to build supports for roofs and such.

Night is fairly dark and there's no brightness slider, so finding some sort of light is important, and nothing quite beats tossing a neon chem light into a town only to light up a horde of zombies.

In multiplayer, when you open the menu you have to wait 10 seconds if you want to disconnect, which makes rage quitting and cancel quitting a lot harder which is great.

Cons:

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While there are those good things there's a lot of very bad things.The two current worlds available (a canadian town with a military base and basically the woods from hunger games) are large enough to feel massive and strange for the first time playing, and meeting up with other people is a very fun experience, although once you find a magical map that shows everything and where you are some of that magic fades.

Killing players, animals, and zombies, as well as harvesting resources nets experience which can be used to increase skills such as sneaking, accuracy, and melee prowess. There's a skill related to crafting which is interesting since without it you can only build basic structures and such, but you can rack up experience rather quickly. You do lose some on death but you can get it back pretty quickly.

You can find or craft sleeping bags and cots, which you can claim (only one at a time), and when you die you have the option of spawning randomly or if you wait 10 seconds you can spawn at your bed.

One of the biggest problems is every time you quit and rejoin your world everything respawns, so if you build away from zombies you can just keep rebooting and harvesting the same materials, or loot a place and reboot. You have to deal with the zombies again but that's not really a threat.

There are also a number of cars which need gas and repairs, but the gas sources (gas stations) and the repair tool are infinitely resupplying so once you find both you're set for life, not too mention you can attract a horde easily by honking your horn and then running them all over. You don't get experience but you've neutralized the threat. You can switch seats in the car, so you can have a driver and people gunning or riding which is a lot of fun. Once they take enough damage they will catch fire, and eventually explode (see: flying into the air like a majestic land whale), and once dead they are unrepairable and don't respawn, so keeping them alive is a good challenge. There are also many different kinds, ranging from pickups to sports cars to humvees, and they all have their own pros and cons.

There are multiple bars you have to keep track of: health, hunger, thirst, stamina, and sickness. Health is repaired using health items like rags and such which can be crafted from cloth which can be crafted from clothes, so while it's cool to see things getting multiple ses once you find a clothing store you can make pretty high level healing items. There's also a bleeding effect but it only occurs when inflicted by other players. Hunger and thirst are self explanatory, you can find food and drink in fresh and moldy varieties, where if you have a certain item you can purify the food or drink, or take your chances and increase your sickness. However, you can craft moldy vegetables into seeds which when planted anywhere on grass grow into fresh food which begets 2 seeds, so hunger becomes trivial rather quickly. As for thirst you can find or craft a canteen which can be refilled at any body of water for no negative cost, so like I said things get trivial quick. Stamina is drained when you sprint, jump, or perform power attacks with melee weapons. This is balanced pretty well, where you have to time your jumps right when escaping a mob or risk running out of energy and getting swarmed. Sickness increases when attacked by zombies or when you eat rotten food, so even if you have healing items you have to find anti-sickness items which is pretty cool.

The crafting system is difficult to maneuver, contains lots of redundant item combining recipes, and essentially requires the wiki.

Arrows can be crafted quite easily with the proper tools, and all items have unlimited health so once you have a bow (which you can craft) and a good melee weapon you're completely set.

While hordes can seem intimidating at first glance, once you have their attention and a good melee weapon you can get them to form a line and just run around them stabbing repeatedly until they're all dead, since they can only turn so quickly. It feels meta as heck and is something I try to avoid.

I'd like to say I have high hopes for this game, it's a blast to play in co-op but there are lot of things that worry me. The developer has said they're working on a mod api of sorts, as well as an in game level editor, so I plan on trying my hand at a 'Better Than Unturned' once I can, hehe. All that said the game is free to play, I recommend playing this game with a couple friends on hardcore, it really can be fun, but I am worried about it's future.

[Elusivehawk]

Yeah, the game has some glaringly obvious flaws. However, I find it's also sort of fun, in a guilty pleasure sort of way.

But overall, if you can avoid it, you should do just that; Turn around, run away, go play some Magicka or something.