Deadside

I went into Deadside expecting another janky survival sandbox that would chew up my weekend and spit out frustration. What I got was more nuanced than that, and also occasionally more frustrating. Bad Pixel spent years in Early Access building something that sits in a specific lane: leaner and faster than DayZ, more grounded and realistic than Rust, with gunplay that actually holds up under scrutiny. Bullet drop is in, recoil is meaningful, and the sound design does a lot of heavy lifting when you're scanning tree lines for a player who may or may not be about to ruin your afternoon. On a mid-weight setup you'll be surprised how clean the performance is for an open-world survival shooter of this scope. The server type split is one of the smarter structural decisions here. Full PvP servers keep the tension razor-thin and full-loot death means every firefight carries weight. Scheduled-raid PvP servers let you fight players freely but restrict base raiding to specific windows, which is a reasonable concession for people who have jobs. PvE servers exist if you want to learn the map, practice loot routes, or just build without someone flattening your walls while you sleep. The world spans a large post-Soviet open map called Mirny, and a second tighter map named Potny, added in 2025, that is designed for faster rotations and more frequent contacts. The vehicle system, boats, motorcycles, and cars, means traversal does not become a second job, and code-locked storage on those vehicles is a genuinely useful touch. The PvE events are where Deadside earns its PvPvE label honestly. Crashed helicopters, convoy intercepts, and mission sites draw multiple players toward the same loot naturally, without a contrived circle. You fight the NPC defenders, then possibly fight the other players who showed up for the same reason. The AI has been a moving target through patches: veterans in the community have complained that successive updates softened NPC difficulty and simplified base upkeep costs to the point where the survival teeth feel pulled. That criticism has some merit. Resource acquisition for vehicles and base maintenance has been tuned down considerably from earlier versions, and the NPC challenge can feel inconsistent depending on which patch cycle you land on. The developers are active and balance feedback is ongoing, but if you came here expecting a slow grind with real scarcity, the 1.0 version is considerably more forgiving than the Early Access era. Weapon variety is solid. Each gun fits a different engagement range and playstyle, there is a mod system for attachments, and the gunplay feel is one of the better implementations in this subgenre. What lets the package down is anti-cheat confidence on PvP servers, clunky inventory UI that the community has flagged repeatedly, and a sense that PvP server populations can be thin depending on region and time zone. Recent Steam reviews have trended mixed in the short-term window despite a broadly positive all-time score, which usually signals a game in a transition period where the player base disagrees about what the game should be. That tension is real here: the original hardcore audience and a newer, more casual wave are pulling in opposite directions with every patch. For a shooter-focused player, the gunplay loop and PvPvE event design are the genuine hooks. Get in with a small group, pick a scheduled-raid or full-PvP server, treat the PvE events as natural PvP funnels, and the game has a rhythm that holds up for decent session lengths. Solo players grinding PvE will hit a ceiling faster. Performance concerns that plague this genre are largely absent here, which is worth stating plainly.

Fred · Scout Team

Shooters

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