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PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Review

GENRE

Can you imagine a game where 100 players are thrown on to an island to and kill each other until there’s only one man standing? PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or ‘PUBG’ for short, follows this chaotic brilliance that gamers have wanted for years. Being a battle royale game, PUBG offers players the opportunity to do what they so please. From scavenging weapons, armour and supplies in hopes of surviving the anarchic world around you, PUBG takes this aspect and brilliantly performs. PUBG, created by the genius Brendan Greene, helped create games such as H1Z1: King of the Kill or earlier Arma II mods.

NARRATIVE

As for the narrative, PUBG takes place on different islands, with the main island being called Erangel. Erangel is an abandoned Russian island – where it was controlled by a military occupation, who kindly left behind weapons scattered around the land for anyone to play with. This military occupation tested chemical/biological experiments on the islands population – leading to a resistance attack on a biological facility, and this resulted in abandonment of the island. Of course, every game has to have a backstory, and PUBG’s definitely stands above other games for originality.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay in PUBG is not only an exhilarating multiplayer shooter – but no two matches are the same, leading to you wanting to play again and again. Players are forced to jump out of a plane, and parachute down below, to anywhere of your choice. With nothing but your clothing, you’re expected to loot for weapons, armour, ammo, helmets, health packs, energy drinks and attachments for your weapon. These critical items that keep each player alive are scattered around the game’s two maps, in towns, cities and abandoned structures. However, if the player wants to play more stealthily – they can parachute to some distant area that you know you won’t be attacked, therefore resulting in a stress-free looting spree. Of course, this comes with downsides as the loot in these quieter areas won’t be as good – as say compared to the military base. Likewise, if you decide you’re crazy enough to start in a busy location, where you know there will be good loot, expect a chaotic blood bath as players scramble to find anything they can to kill each other. During this race to stay alive, you can box players to death with just your fists – leading to hilarious moments that you won’t forget. On top of all this – there is a circle that spawns in, that restricts your play area. If you don’t get inside the circle before the time runs out – you slowly start to lose health, eventually being killed by the ‘blue zone’. What is for sure, this game will throw anything at you to keep you on your toes. With all that being said, unfortunately, PUBG has a few performance issues, with some high end computers even struggling to play on ‘High’ settings. Players often complain that the game isn’t very well optimized, and that the performance decrease from ‘Low’ to ‘Ultra’ just isn’t worth the beautiful visuals. That being said – Bluehole are working incredibly hard on releasing hot-fixes that should help boost performance – helping out those with cheaper components.

CHARACTERS

PUBG has a great variety of customisations for your characters – giving each player their own unique look. PUBG doesn’t gave a main character, in some ways you, the player, are considered as the main character. There are plenty of clothing options available, from a trench coat to a bike helmet – PUBG isn’t limited when it comes to customizing your player. Furthermore, there are plenty of different character looks and styles to choose from, giving the players even more features. However, players have to open ‘crates’ that contain new clothes, either earned through ‘Battle Points’ which players can get by simply playing the game, or you can pay for a key that unlocks higher level crates – meaning rarer clothes to get. Of course, this is the developer’s way of earning more money, but it’s very clever because eventually, the player will want to make their player look more interesting than constantly opening free crates with striped t-shirts.

TARGET AUDIENCE

PUBG’s has a very unique target audience. A gaming trend for the past two years has been the battle royale-style game, meaning players are virtually connected on a constantly shrinking map with 99 other gamers, and the goal is to be the last player standing. Of course, this attracts gamers at all levels – due to the battle royale genre having a growing gaming community lately with many players waiting on a breakout title with e-sports aspiration to be released. The game is rated a 16 due to the violence, meaning that the age group varies between 16 and 50. People enjoy watching PUBG on Twitch and YouTube, with a huge popularity spike recently, as streamers share their gameplay to the internet.

PLATFORMS

PUBG was first released for PC as a closed alpha and beta, with about 80,000 players. Official early access launched on March 23, 2017 for the Windows version. PUBG was then released on 21^st December, 2017, which had many positive reviews on the Steam website. Off course, console players couldn’t miss out, with the Xbox edition releasing on December 12^th, 2017, before being fully released.

RECOMMENDATION

In my opinion, PUBG is a fantastic battle royale that is an imperfectly perfect game. I say this because there are definitely a lot of flaws to this game that sometimes ruins the experience for some players. For example, hacking has become a trend recently, with people using ‘aimbot’ or ‘speed-hacking’ that does what it says on the tin. This ruins the experience for other players, causing them to attack the steam store with negative reviews. That being said, Bluehole did listen, and recently released a patch that should have banned up to 1 million players – blimey! Now, as for the positives, PUBG is a brilliant last man standing battle royale, where each match is just so thrilling that you just want to play again and again. Whether that’s in a squad of friends, or just playing solo, I guarantee an enjoyable and exciting experience, no matter your skill level. That’s what makes PUBG so great – it doesn’t matter about finishing at the top, it’s about how much fun you have during the match itself. As a player myself, I don’t care about winning a chicken dinner, but I enjoy the satisfaction of getting even one kill that you work so hard to get.

RATINGS FOR AT LEAST THREE DIFFERENT ASPECTS

The graphics in PUBG are stunning. There are no other words for it, the rich shadows and textures completely immerse you into the game - bringing your PC monitor to life. That being said however, this all depends on the graphic settings. Do you like stunning graphics? Then put the graphics on high. That's the best settings for you! If you want higher FPS (Or Frames Per Second), which you probably do because the game is unoptimized to some degree, whether you have a cheap bargain computer or expensive gaming machine. So even if you have a powerful graphics card, playing on Ultra will be taxing on your FPS, getting 60-70 at most in rural areas.

The world is full of different locations whether that's a military base or secluded house in the middle of an open field. The game world itself is deathly quiet most of the time, so opening fire or starting up a vehicle is a big risk. This eerie aspect of PUBG makes even the clumsy player have to play stealthily and carefully as they roam the map. The 'zone' or 'circle' is the important part of PUBG that gives it progression and forces players to battle until there is only one man standing. This 'get inside the zone or you will die' idea is brilliant for a game with such an open world, because this adds pressure to each player. The two different maps gives PUBG variety and interest. Both maps require different skills, because the desert map is very open and you're more likely to use a sniper rifle as compared to the other map, which contains lots of close-up action. The vehicles in the game, albeit incredibly glitched, offers a fun experience for everyone when it comes to chases, explosions, and generally a great fun if you're in a squad in the same vehicle.

As for the weapons in PUBG, there are eight firearm classes as well as melee weapons and grenades, and each variant within them has a distinct set of strengths and weaknesses that make it stand out. As it has got plenty of Arma DNA running through it, PUBG does an impeccable job of making shootouts feel realistic, and few games can achieve the gunshot sounds. From assault rifles to sniper rifles, PUBG has a great range of choice for the player. The crate drops contain guns, armour, ammo and other items that the player cannot find anywhere else in the map - which is a brilliant for players who want the very best. What is for sure, this game keeps me coming back to play for hours on end.