Skip to main content

Viral Sensation: A Sloshing Syringe Of H1Z1 Footage

Looking a little rusty

A quick primer for those who've been living under a rock: 1) SOE's making a spiritual successor to Star Wars Galaxies that is also a zombie game, 2) yeah I know, and 3) zombies have transcended mere fad-dom and become immortal cultural icons for reasons I'll never be able to fully comprehend. H1Z1's impressively ambitious within a very narrow lineage, though. Think DayZ or Rust, but with thousands of players per server, huge areas for them all to build on, and realistic fire to purify all that the unholy hand of man has wrought. Or piss off your friends/enemies. Whichever. Quick trailer and lengthier recording of a recent Twitch stream below.

The trailer is a trailer, but the stream's a fair bit more revealing. Vehicles are already in, as is the Promised (Very, Very Big) Land. Zombies, meanwhile, seem vicious but idiotic, and the whole thing (rather predictably, given the lack of other players) feels pretty empty otherwise. Also clunky.

H1Z1 is clearly quite early at this point, so we largely have to take SOE on good faith for a lot of the less derivative features it's been promising. On the upside, a more public alpha should be arriving soon-ish, so hopefully the wait to build, form relationships that could last a lifetime, and then flippantly burn it all down won't be too long.

For the time being, how are you feeling about SOE's rapidly progressing case of zombie fever? It might not look like the freshest corpse in the mausoleum, but what about on its own merits? If SOE delivers on its promises, do you think H1Z1 will be worth one quick look or more than a few Zs?

Read this next