As indicated by my best games of 2012 blog a couple months ago, my favorite game of 2012 was actually the mod 'Dayz' for Arma II Combined Operations. Recently I have been playing another mod that isn't quite as big of a deviation from the base game as Dayz, 'Wasteland.' Wasteland is sort of like a mix of Minecraft, Dayz and well Arma II. Basically there are three 'factions' you can join when loading into the game. Two of the factions are like traditional teams, but the third faction is 'independent' which means everyone on this team can either group up amongst themselves or simply go it alone, killing anything and everyone (including independents).

A bit like Dayz you initially spawn at a random location with just a pistol, map and compass. However instead of loot spawning in Dayz-style, the server will randomly spawn vehicles in towns and they will contain weapons. There are also weapon-crates which can be found. If you choose to side with Blufor or Opfor, you can spawn on any town that has team-members and no enemies. If you choose to play on the independent team, you can go it alone or make a private group. The idea of Wasteland is to build bases, complete objectives, compile weapons and vehicles and launch attacks on enemy bases.

Base building is a key component of Wasteland. Base parts, such as sand bags, walls and bunkers are scattered around the map, mostly in towns. These structures can be placed into vehicles, driven to your base, and moved into place. Once there, the object can be 'locked' so that no one can move it apart from you. Weapons caches can be moved and locked in similar fashion.

The group of guys I've been playing with recorded some of our endeavors, here is a video of our group building and defending a base (I am Mr. Gorbachev in these videos):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_m0BE1K1Og

Once you have a base and some basic weapons, you can try and tackle some of the objectives. There are main objectives and side objectives that pop up every 10 minutes or so. Usually these involve a vehicles such as a tank or helicopter in primary objectives or a special vehicle such as a SUV with a machine gun or a weapons crate in side objectives being dropped at a random location on the map. The vehicle will be defended by a handful of AI soldiers, but you will also need to contend with enemy soldiers going for the objective at the same time. To make things even more stressful, the vehicles will usually be in poor conditions, and you will need to refuel and repair them before you can drive to safety.

Once you have some decent weapons and vehicles, you can try and mount assaults on enemy bases. These are in my experience some of the most exciting moments of the game as you co-ordinate with your group and come up with strategies to clear the enemies out of their base. If the base is not in a town, people can only spawn in if there is a spawn beacon which can be destroyed.

Here is a video of our group raiding an enemy base: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFyQBzsofo

Wasteland isn't quite as intense as Dayz since you know everyone outside of your group is hostile, but there is no shortage of tension and excitement to be had in this mod. Dayz gave me great appreciation for the gunplay and PvP of Arma II, and it really shines in Wasteland.