Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, the game that drops 100 players into an island to kill each other for survival, started a new revolution in video games when it landed on Steam in March 2017.
The game recently came out of Beta and the version 1.0 of the game is now officially available for everyone to play. I've been playing PUBG for a couple of months and it's finally time to take a closer look at the finished game.
The Battle Royale Frenzy
PUBG's Battle Royale style gameplay is nothing new. There were many games out there with this style of gameplay. However, PUBG managed to score big with this concept by giving people more control over the entire game.
Many other games are now adopting this new Battle Royale style gameplay to create improved multiplayer modes. Fortnite Battle Royale is another game that made quite a success taking inspiration from PUBG.
Gameplay
At its core, PUBG is all about survival. Basically, the gameplay is about parachuting onto the island, loot houses for weapons and items, and survive until the end.
It's simple but not easy. Because, sometimes, you may do everything right but someone might shoot you from a mile away with a handgun. Yes, it happens. In PUBG, handguns, shotguns, and rifles have the same range and accuracy.
When the game begins, you are dropped from a plane onto an island along with 99 other players. There are two maps available on PUBG. A map featuring a rural terrain with lots of grass and green and a desert map featuring lots of nothing. Another map with a snowy theme is also said to be in the works.
Upon landing on the island, your main goal is to survive. To do this you need stuff like guns, medkits, weapon attachments, kevlar vests, helmets, and frying pans. You collect these by going into houses and buildings.
After gearing up, you start hunting other people. Of course, to make sure people don't hide away in a house for hours, there's another trick involved: A force field. This force field will force you to move into new locations on the map from time to time. If you caught outside the field, you die. This field will get smaller and smaller until all the remaining players are trapped into a small area.
This makes your chances of winning a game very low. You can play 100 games and win once. It's that difficult. But of course, the game is all about survival. And you can still make it to the top 10 without even firing a single bullet.
Graphics
Don't let that 2005 style graphics and textures fool you. PUBG is a game that requires an enormous amount of system resources. You can have a 1080Ti card and still lag. It's part of the fun that comes with the game.
Adjusting graphics settings to medium is the best way to plan the game without having to smash your monitor. Also, set the foliage settings to Low. When set to high, you will see lots of grass on the ground. A good place to hide. But someone else with Foliage set to Low will see you hiding from a mile away.
Customizations + Cosmetics + Scoreboards
When you finish a game, you will receive a certain amount of credits. You can use this as currency to buy crates. These crates contain cosmetics and other items you can use to style your character.
You can also buy these with real money. But, they have very little to do with gameplay.
PUBG now has a scoreboard. Which will show you all the stats related to your matches and show rankings.
Is It Worth Your Money?
Even after its stable release, PUBG still looks and feels like a game from 2005. It's broken in many ways. Gameplay can be frustrating at times. You get stuck in-between walls. Opening doors is another pain of its own.
Having said that, it's also a refreshingly fun game to play with your friends or solo.
