In a shooter on Steam, MeinMMO editor Dariusz Müller finally experiences a feeling that PvP shooters have not been able to generate for years – and he loves it.
Playing a first-person shooter against other players for the first time is a special feeling. Everything feels threatening and you have the sense that death lurks around every corner. I still remember how I cautiously walked through the map in my first PvP shooters, feeling a constant tension.
Nowadays, I only observe this tension from the outside, watching shooter newcomers and inexperienced players. After thousands of hours in games like Rainbow Six: Siege and Battlefield, I no longer feel tense. I have the ego that I can win most of my gunfights, and if I do lose, the opponent must obviously be cheating, I lagged, or I was actually already behind the wall.
Even in completely new games, I don’t feel this tension anymore. I have no fear of other players or in-game death. Tension is only generated by the will to win and competitive ambition, nothing more – except in Gray Zone Warfare, and I am currently playing that way too much.
A ruthless game including training as a field medic
Gray Zone Warfare manages to create a sense of tension that PvP games have not been able to give me for years – and this is mainly due to the godlessly dangerous NPCs and the design of the map.
What is Gray Zone Warfare anyway?
Gray Zone Warfare is a type of extraction shooter with a persistent map. That means a server remains active for hours, and I don’t have to reach an extraction point after 20 minutes. Instead, I fly from my base to a landing zone on the map with a helicopter, complete quests in the open world, and return with the helicopter to the base as soon as I have finished everything. In the process, I take on the role of a mercenary on the fictional Southeast Asian island of “Lamang,” which is under quarantine and torn by faction wars. During the missions, I encounter NPC opponents from the aforementioned factions.
Every battle with the NPCs is threatening, as I am often alone in the jungle or in remote villages, without access to useful items or help. I must keep an eye on my surroundings and listen closely to whether enemies are lurking in the underbrush. A careless moment can quickly end in death, as the game has an authentic weapon and injury system.
- If someone shoots me in the arm, I need to stitch and bandage the wound.
- If I break my leg, I need to apply a splint.
- If an organ is damaged, I must operate in the open field under enemy fire.
Depending on the type of wound, it is crucial for me to hurry while treating it, because excessive blood loss can lead to a coma or even immediate death. If I’m unlucky, one single hit is enough, and I bite the dust. The game almost forces me to learn the basics of medical items within my first few hours of gameplay and quickly become a somewhat competent field medic.
Between stormtroopers and John Wick
The NPCs in Gray Zone Warfare are unpredictable. One moment, an enemy surprised me and shot at me automatically from 3 meters away, but in true stormtrooper fashion, they didn’t hit a single shot. The next moment, a single shot from a 60-year-old Mosin-Nagant killed me because it hit sideways between my armor plates and pierced my heart.
I can count the total number of my deaths in Gray Zone Warfare on both hands, but when I die, despite thick armor and a ballistic helmet, I stand no chance.
I was shot in the carotid artery 3 times. Once I died from a shot to the wrist (which probably hit the radial artery). And once, I walked into a tripwire in the middle of the jungle that had a special surprise.
I was always dead on the spot.
… Except for that one time when an enemy patrol saw and riddled me with bullets while I was lying behind a bush in pitch darkness from hundreds of meters away …
The NPCs really show no mercy and open fire immediately as soon as they see players. Most are not professionally trained elite fighters who try to sneak around, conserve ammunition, or take care of their weapons. They just shoot with everything they have.
Sometimes they also shoot blindly at bushes and hope to land a lucky hit.
Finally back to the grind even without PvP
So far, I have over 60 hours in Gray Zone Warfare and still feel that tension when I enter a new area. Recently, I played the shooter for 10 hours straight on a day off – that hasn’t happened in a long time. Even on similar gaming days, I usually switch games at some point. In Gray Zone Warfare, I could currently put in 10 hours every day, if I had the time.
Gray Zone Warfare just captivates me with this tension that I haven’t felt in so long. The opaque jungle setting, the unpredictable NPCs, and the authentic injury system with a range of deadly injuries simply require a certain level of caution.
While there is also PvP, it is not necessary to create this threatening feeling. Even on PvE servers, I cannot just rush in like Rambo, but must scout my enemies, preferably find a position with cover, and take down the opponents one by one.
At any time, there could still be someone behind a bush or in a dark corner that I haven’t seen – especially at night.
A death in Gray Zone Warfare is not as tragic as in classic extraction shooters because, due to the persistent map, I have the chance to loot my own corpse. Nevertheless, I want to avoid dying at all costs, as this has the consequence that ongoing main missions fail and then have a short cooldown since the latest update.
I have been sneaking through the jungle for days now, feeling like over 10 years ago when shooter players seemed as threatening to me as the NPCs of Gray Zone Warfare.
Not only I have returned to Gray Zone Warfare with the 0.4 update. Thousands of players have returned to Steam or have decided to buy after a long period of uncertainty. This is mainly due to the extensive changes and new features of the update: A shooter known for tactics and hard fights is now focusing more on PvE – player numbers explode on Steam by 1,300%
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