🙇‍♂️ DayZ - Livonia (DLC) "Sorry Everyone" 🙇‍♂️

From the developers

Livonia is the brand-new DLC map for DayZ, allowing players to experience the hardcore survival hit in a whole new environment. Up to 60 players on a server will be tasked with a single goal: survive this new unfamiliar land for as long as possible, by any means necessary.

Key Features

New massive world to explore. At 163 km², Livonia is big enough to provide you with hours of exploration as you learn the lay of the land. Its varied landscapes and numerous landmarks provide an abundance of places for players to take shelter, build a base, and hide from both the infected and other survivors.

Idyllic environment. This Eastern European terrain covers the southern Topolin-Nadbór region of the larger Polish-speaking country of Livonia. The new topography brings lush green landscapes, dense forests, overgrown fields, winding rivers, serene lakes, murky swamps, an array of dilapidated structures, and various remnants of an abandoned society.

Frequent Encounters. The new map is the perfect size for survivors looking for player-interactions. Whether friendly or hostile, you'll stumble upon other players much more often in Livonia.

Fresh hunting ground. Livonia's food supply is scarce, and players wanting to survive will have to quickly learn how to forage, fish, and hunt in this new wilderness to keep from starving. Luckily, Livonia is home to a plethora of wildlife for survivors to live off. But beware: alongside this delicious fauna a new threat roams the post-apocalyptic world of DayZ, and it comes in the form of the Eurasian Brown Bear. Watch out!

Erratic weather. The temperate late-summer climate of Livonia, although usually quite pleasant, brings frequent rainfall and severe thunderstorms. This unpredictable and relentless weather will pose an additional challenge for survivors, as you’ll have to keep a keen eye open for protective gear and shelter to shield yourself from the unforgiving elements.

We received this DLC for review several months ago and, to be honest, I’ve been putting off writing about it because I don’t feel I can really cover the game fairly, I’ll explain why below but just to let you all know, there won’t be a score for this, just a brief explanation on my behalf. I know that this is unusual for GF but I hope I can put across why I feel in this odd situation which is entirely of my own making.

Long, long ago when DayZ was announced (I believe I caught wind of it in 2012 / 2013), I was excited. At the time I hadn’t really played much in the survival game genre and the thought of an open-world zombie game really revved my engine.

As the game was delayed, however, and initially released in extremely early versions - which I avoided as I would rather play the full game, such was my keenness – I moved on to other, similar titles, the main one being 7 Days to Die, which could be played in split-screen on the PS4, which I did for literally hundreds of hours with my cohort and GF regular, Co-Op Chris.

We adore that game and have on multiple occasions played it for entire days straight in charity streams etc. and, when they announced that there would likely be no future console updates, we were gutted. 

At the tail end of last year when I saw that we had received review copies of DayZ Livonia, including the base game, I basically got over-excited and logged them next to my name for a review and installed them. This was a huge mistake and one I wish to apologise for, I’ll explain how GF works in regards to reviewing so that my mistake is in full context.

Games Freezer is effectively Rich and me along with other, occasional freelancers that help us out. The games that we receive for review are kept in a shared document and we choose the ones that we like the look of. There are certain genres that I avoid as (and I’ve learned this the hard way through the years) playing a game in a genre that you have no interest in is unfair on the developers, publishers, the website and the reviewer themselves. I, for instance, avoid strategy games that require the player to get hips deep, space-trading games, mobile games and card-based games among a few others just because they aren’t my bag, they could be the best games in their field and I wouldn’t appreciate them. It’s hard to write a fair review when the game feels like a slog from the start because it is in a genre that one has little interest in.

Back to DayZ, even as the game was installing the content and various updates, it dawned on me that, to review this game fairly, I’d have to play the base game for dozens of hours to have a context for the DLC which was the main point of the review and I’d then have to play the DLC for several hours more for comparison.

It also dawned on me that I don’t play games online, have played no other game like this since 7 Days to Die and only really liked that game because I played it in co-op split screen. A decade ago I liked the idea of an open-world online zombie game but in practice, they really aren’t my thing.

Even if this game was something like Cyberpunk 2077 - which is a game that I am yearning for - the amount of time I would have to put in for a fair review would slow down my output for our website so much that I would think twice as I enjoy providing regular content as opposed to one review every few weeks. Again, this is a two-man operation so that has to be taken into account.

It’s not fair for me to review this game because I simply don’t feel equipped to. I sincerely apologise to Bohemia Interactive, Rich (my editor) and the readers of Games Freezer for this, I’ve put myself in an awful situation that benefits no-one. The only positive that comes out of this is that it has been an embarrassing learning curve for me to be more professional in my choices and not just act like a child and get over-excited. Sorry, everyone.

Britt