Jeevz told me about this mod, called DayZ, for ARMA2 OA which is currently still in Alpha but a lot better than most AAA games.

You have the whole island of Chernarus to wander around and up 50 human players to play with or against depending on how you want to play, and AI zombies that multiply as the real-time game progresses. It is highly realistic and has a full night/day cycle to match where the server is hosted. You have a certain amount of blood (your health really) and if you are attacked, shot, don't eat or drink you lose blood and must bandage, eat/drink to stay alive.

You start with a Makarov and 5 mags, a water bottle (fillable), a tin of beans, flares and your humanity....

Scavenge (or kill) for food, water, weapons, ammo, car/helo parts to stay alive. Just like in The Walking Dead, the zombies aren't the worst things in the game, your fellow players are. If you murder someone you lose humanity and become a bandit and wear different clothing and other players will shoot you on sight. You can kill a bandit without consequence though.

It really is a battle to survive and no matter what server you go on you have a saved player file and you will always start where you ended last time with all the equipment you had.

I am a bandit at the moment. I was trying to head north to get away from the bandit ridden cities in the south and had managed to scavenge a watch and an AKS-74 with a Kobra sight and 3 mags. Moving north I heard someone behind me, turned and there was a player stood looking at me, pistol outstretched, well I put 5 rounds into him just by shock of seeing him behind me and killed him. I became a bandit ( ) and looted his body. Found a backpack (bigger than my patrol pack), 6 AK mags, a 1911 and 5 mags, water, chem lights, a compass (best of all that was!), map, food, cans of drink and loads more stuff which fitted into my newly looted backpack

He was furious on the chat lol, but he did come up behind me and did feel like he was trailing me. Just a little glimpse into the great mod.

Thanks for the heads up Jeevz.

The zombies move too fast and there is no hand to hand combat that I can see so when you run out of ammo you are basically dead. Add to that the fact that going indoors is a study in frustrations (your gun prevents you from turning near a wall) and I have a really hard time enjoying the game.

Even if they could slow the zombies down a bit it would make it more playable.

As for the annoying movement indoors, there's a mod called STmovement that fixes that. I think it's part of ACE? They should add that to the mod. Maybe you can use the mod on the Dayz servers, I don't know. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMsRa-7Zb0U

I will have to try that.

I've been playing this for the last few nights (that is when i can get onto a server) and its great, really creepy at night. The longest I lasted was 2 hrs until i entered Electro and was killed by a bandit with a sniper rifle. You'll find the larger towns and cities are crawling with Bandits.

It isn't necessarily a 100% rule that everyone will kill you if you're in bandit clothing, it really depends upon whether you announce your presence to a wary group or not. Quite a few folks garner bandit status after being shot at by another player, killing them in self-defense, and then garnering "bandit" status for awhile simply because the guy they shot was not yet a bandit himself (happened to me once). I actually love this setup though, because when I was in bandit clothing I was much more cautious about meeting other players lest they assume the worst and off me on sight, and it actually causes you to be even more trigger happy at the outset of a meeting (thereby causing you to lose even more humanity if you give in to your urge to just kill them). When you acquire a DMR semi-automatic sniper rifle and a Remington 870 with a flashlight attachment, you just don't become all that trusting of other folks.

The person I killed had a DMR and I tried to pick it up but it just disappeared! Have had that happen with backpacks too, with all my stuff in.

I'm still alive going north but the longest I survived before was almost 3 days until when I actually managed to get into the game I was losing blood dues to not having any food so had to go into Cherno at night, no zombies anywhere, found a dead body and looted him and he had food. Whilst moving away I saw a bandit move back into a shop. I moved backawards into a dark alley and moved around where he was but he had already run back up a grassy bank about 200 ft away and start sniping me with some suppressed rifle and must have had NV optics as I was moving in shadow. Killed me anyway.

I'm surprised they haven't implemented a melee mechanic, it's not impossible -- just feels a trace clunky. But then again, ArmA always feels nothing if not a trace clunky!

Well I tried to try this mod out today.... very unsuccessfully.... I spent about 3 hours just trying to get into a server.... when I did finally find one that wasn't full, the server would freeze or something and I would never actually get into the 3D world. I managed to get into the 3D world about 2 times during my 3 hours of trying, never saw another person or a zombie or even a building. I was in-game for maybe 5 minutes before the server timed out/crashed whatever it did. Finally I just got fed up with it and gave up. I'll try again later... hoping for better results.