Deadside

• Early Access playable area limited to about 25 sq.km. (Eventual size 225 sq.km)
• Missions, open to all within the map, featuring objectives and NPCs.
• Realistic ballistics and hardcore weapon damage, with 19 weapons available at early access.
• Safe zones, called ‘Green Zones’, are places of trade and communication between players and friendly NPC traders.
• Base Building & Crafting
• Base raiding: bases have an “online-only” raid system. If you kill other players and they have a base, they might drop a raid token. This token, when activated, shows everyone on the server the location of the base, and it’s raidable for an hour.

Similar to DayZ- food and water are required and prevalent. There are plans, per the developers, to add nuance and depth to an injury/healing system. The crux of your 'survival' here is not being killed by other players and/or the hostile AI.

So I’ve given Deadside a shot a couple of times, and while it’s not for me, I haven’t entirely decided how I feel about it yet. First and foremost, it’s always been hard for me to use a less refined/advanced version of a product/game after using a “better version.” So after spending most of my time within modded DayZ servers and SCUM, it’s hard to take that step down into the (to me) less refined UI/mechanics/gameplay feel of Deadside. 

Some other examples; loot placed out in Deadside felt somewhat gimmicky with the glow/highlight aspect and sometimes painted assets (like trash or jeans on the floor) looked intractable but weren’t. Cars/houses/containers felt clunky & like pointless filler since they lacked engagement/interaction/depth. Vast swaths of foliage could be run through, but oddly, some branches of a group of trees would be solid. My stats (water/food) seemed pretty boundless, and my health regenerated reasonably quickly- but these could be due to mods on the server(s) I was frequenting.

Negative reviews on the game mainly highlight similar issues to any other pvp based game- issues with cheaters/hackers/griefing. So server choice will be necessary- or pay to rent a personal server! Like Subsistence and Mist Survival, many comments touched on the headshot/deadliness aspect of the AI hostiles. So if being taken out by players and NPCs isn’t your style, perhaps steer clear? I'll give it a neutral vote right now and maybe come back to it in the future.

Website Changelog

• 3/12/23- Changelog added.