Viqor played ArmA II: Operation Arrowhead

I've been looking at ARMA II for a while now: simulations intrigue me even if I'm not particularly good at them, and while I was tempted to get the game before at some points, I was pretty content to wait until the arrival of ARMA III to jump into the series. That is, until I read about Day Z. For those of you who don't know, Day Z is a zombie survival mod that drops you into a 225 square kilometer island (taken from ARMA II's main game) with some basic provisions (food, water, flares, bandages, and a gun) and tells you to survive. It's a completely open experience: you can move from town to town alone gathering supplies and avoiding zombies and other players as much as possible. You can team up with other humans: banding together to improve your odds of survival. Or you can be a bandit: killing other players for their stuff and preying on the trust of others. The key to this mod's success is that anyone you see could be playing any one of these roles, this leads to extreme caution and even paranoia among players who worry about loosing the goods they have spent hours gathering up. It's a bit difficult to explain, but it feels more authentically like a zombie movie than any other game that I have ever played. The fear, paranoia, and distrust among players is palpable, and you are forced to choose whether you are willing to trust someone with your life or chance it on your own.