PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds - Game Review

A truly exciting and engaging battle royale experience

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Picture the scene. It is eerily quiet. You have taken shelter upstairs in a disused building on an area of wasteland. Having scouted it thoroughly, you have picked up some weapons, ammunition and other useful equipment. While sorting through your haul you detect the distant sound of a car engine, which gets gradually louder and then stops, right outside. There are footsteps, and then you hear the door to your building opening. You hear your unwelcome visitor searching the rooms on the floor below methodically, just as you had a few minutes earlier. The footsteps become clearer and louder as they climb the stairs. Then everything goes deathly quiet.

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You feel your heart beating faster and you try and control your breathing. Do they know you are here? Did they see you enter? You check that your gun is fully loaded, tensing for the inevitable confrontation. You don’t dare move an inch, as any sound will give you away. Your health is low and you haven’t yet found any first aid – you know the odds aren’t in your favour. Without warning, a stun-grenade is thrown into your room and explodes; leaving you disorientated as your vision and hearing are temporarily compromised. Your assailant runs into the room and, before you can react, empties a magazine into you. Game-over. Before you exit, the last thing you see is your killer looting your remains…

 

Welcome to the jungle

Well, maybe not the jungle (there are no jungle maps), but welcome nonetheless to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (or PUBG as it has become known); the stellar battle royale title that is the fifth highest selling game of all time, with over 75 million copies sold.

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PUBG was developed by PUBG Studios and was published by Krafton for PC and Xbox in 2017 and for PlayStation 4 and 5, Android and IOS in 2018. It was created by Brendan Green (PlayerUnknown was his online gamer tag, in case you were wondering) and is based on battle royale mods he had previously produced for other games.

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For those unfamiliar with the term ‘battle royale’, it refers to a gaming genre played online. It takes the form of a first or third person shooter, where a set number of players spawn, explore and battle on a limited play area within a set map (in PUBG they start by parachuting in). They scavenge for weapons, ammunition, protective gear and other equipment, and the objective is simply to survive and be the last one standing. During the game, the ‘safe’ playing area contracts, forcing combatants together and ensuring a conclusion within a predetermined time. You can spend time outside of the safe-zone but your health will deteriorate while you are, and if you don’t reach safety before your health is depleted you will die.

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Every deceased player leaves a death crate where they fall (glowing at first to help you locate it) and by visiting this you can collect anything that they were carrying. In PUBG, games on the larger maps start with a play area of several kilometres squared, but the final showdown will take place in a space just a hundred meters or so in diameter.   

 

Bring a friend

Games can be played individually or in teams of up to four. Team play adds a whole new dimension; the ability to talk to your team mates makes coordinated attacks possible and is astonishingly good fun. Your radio channel can be open to all players (not a good idea unless you want to listen to a stream of abuse, profanities, or nonsense in a foreign language), it can be restricted to your team, or if you are playing alone then it can be turned off completely (highly recommended!). In some maps team-mates can revive each other should one be killed, by collecting the gamer tag from the fallen teammate’s ‘death crate’ and visiting a re-spawn point. 

 

Did you hear something?

While the concept and gameplay are both brilliant, the real genius feature in this game is the audio. Every sound (vehicles, gunshots, footsteps and even more subtle movements) can be pinpointed, not only as coming from the left or right, but as the tone is subtly altered depending on location, you can tell whether it is originating from near or far, in front or behind you, or even (in a multi-level building) from above or below. This 360 degree soundscape is extremely clever and incredibly well implemented, and contributes significantly to the very real feelings of anxiety and panic you experience when another player is in close proximity. To stand the best chance, the game is best played using headphones, or at least through a set up offering excellent stereo sound.

 

Variety is the spice of life (and death)

There are a number of maps available, and these are periodically tweaked or changed completely by game updates. Special maps are sometimes available for a limited time that can feature different weapons or vehicles, and there are themed maps that might include zombies, dinosaurs or other monsters. The different sized maps effectively determine player numbers and game length. A small map might only have room for 30 participants and a game will take about 15 minutes. The larger maps can cater for up to 100 players battling for supremacy but the decreasing play zone still restricts game times to no more than about half an hour. This provides a brilliant ‘pick up and play’ appeal.

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Repeated play will see you collecting and being awarded with various types of bonus passes, tokens and crate coupons. Tokens can be spent on items in the shop such as clothing, and crates can be opened to reveal items of clothing and other rewards. You can also win passes that give bonuses, such as double XP points for a set period. A new player starts the game playing in just underwear, but as your rank increases your character can be personalised with endless combinations of head-wear, tops, trousers and footwear.

 

Choose your weapon

A huge variety of items can be collected in-game to help you. You will find a satisfyingly comprehensive selection of guns and ammunition, including pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, assault rifles and submachine guns, along with weapon add-ons, such as grips, muzzles, stocks, magazines and scopes; each of which affects performance. There are also a variety of grenades and Molotov cocktails that can be found. You can carry two guns plus a handgun, and it is a clever leveller that no single weapon is better than the others, as each has strengths and weaknesses (including power, range, speed of reloading, fire-rate etc.). Thus, they will each perform quite differently depending on the player’s situation; for example a shotgun might work well for close quarter fighting within the confines of a building but will be completely unsuitable for a long-range battle outside.

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Over time each player will work out their preferences. Personally (always assuming I can find them), my ideal is to carry a UMP 45 SMG with a muzzle suppressor and six x scope fitted, along with a sniper rifle with an eight x scope.

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You can collect a backpack (to carry more items) and armoured helmets and vests to reduce damage, with three different levels of each. There are also energy drinks and different types of first aid to help keep you alive. However you can only carry so much (depending on your backpack size), so there comes a time where you have to choose what is important and what to leave behind. Do you need extra ammunition or more first aid? Additional grenades or more energy drinks? This is a key strategic element; your decisions matter, as later in the game running out of any could prove to be fatal.   

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Periodically planes will fly over and drop bonus crates which parachute down. These might contain more powerful weapons or a Ghillie camouflage suit, which will help you remain unseen in the vegetation. These crates attract players though, there is often a scramble to reach one first - so there is always a real added risk in attempting to collect the bonus goodies from one. When exploring you might also find a single-use flare gun that will call for an air crate drop where you fire it.

 

I like driving in my car

If you need to move about a map quickly you can jump into (or onto) one of a selection of vehicles that are dotted around. Controlling them is easy and intuitive with basic accelerate/brake and left/right controls. In team play, players travelling as passengers can fire from the vehicle whilst on the move.

 

Of course, moving about in this way makes noise and therefore highlights your location to other players, but if you need to get inside a safe-zone quickly with the border closing in on you, this is the best way of covering distance at speed. Some players like to stay inside a vehicle (it offers a degree or protection) and will then try and eliminate others in the open by running them over.  

 

Jason Bourne stealth, or Rambo?

Players can decide whether to go for the full ‘gung-ho’ Rambo approach and play overtly, trusting their shooting skills, or alternatively to operate in stealth mode, crawling through vegetation or hiding out in buildings and sniping others. There is no right or wrong way; the ‘gung-ho’ method is perhaps more fun for the player but conversely by drawing attention to themselves they are making themselves a target and consequently may be less likely to make the final stages.

 

Don’t feel sick

The game offers the choice of playing in first or third-person mode, easily selectable from your in-game screen. Usually I can’t play first or third person titles as they all tend to give me motion sickness and some make me feel extremely nauseated, but for whatever reason PUBG doesn’t affect me, and I can play for long periods in third-person mode with no ill effects whatsoever.

 

There are plenty of other customisation options available in an extensively comprehensive series of settings menus, including, I am pleased to report, the option to alter the colour scheme to make the game accessible for those suffering from different types of colour blindness. Well done PUBG, I am very impressed - take a bow.  

 

Ad blocker

So far everything is positive – this is a brilliantly put together game that is really fun and rewarding to play. Not only that but, playing on mobile or a tablet, a huge bonus is that there are NO adverts. For a free download, that is quite special and unusual. In fact, this is pretty much the only mobile game I play that doesn’t bombard me with ads (apart from Clash of Clans) and this is another feature that deserves a big mention.

 

There is income generation of course, you do have the option to spend (real) money to buy extra outfits and tokens to upgrade the look and performance of your weapons, but there is absolutely no need to. This isn’t a game where you can only win matches if you have spent money; I win frequently and I have never bought anything additional.

 

Tick this box to prove you aren’t a robot

However, of course nothing is perfect, and there are a few things that could be better. Firstly, I would suggest that the vast majority of games that you play are not against all (or even, in some cases, a significant number of) human players. There are real opponents in game of course (the unintelligible chatter on the audio channel and high skill set of some of your adversaries tells you that), but I would guess that recently some games played on IOS have been against anything up to 80%-90% computer controlled ‘bot’ opponents.

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The bots are easily spotted; they don’t have the greatest A.I. and behave very predictably (but not as a real player would). They will see you and fire at you from some distance no matter how well hidden you are. They will also normally send a single grenade your way if you are in a building. If you return fire they will hide behind the nearest tree (if there is one), popping their head out at convenient intervals allowing you to pick them off fairly easily. They rarely seem to go upstairs in larger buildings, and the biggest giveaway is that their aim is woeful, worse than an Imperial Stromtrooper (indeed you have to try pretty hard to be killed by one, unless you are unlucky enough to be caught out by the single grenade!).

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The bots don’t stop it being fun though, and their inclusion certainly makes life a bit easier for a newer or less skilled player, but anyone thinking that they are battling against 100 real players is going to be disappointed. I guess the flip side is that by making up the numbers with A.I. opponents you never have to wait too long for a game to start.

 

Who designed the front end?

I must also take a moment to have a moan about the front end screen. I find it particularly confusing, with icons dotted all over the place, many containing multiple submenus, with no real clue as to where anything is and in some cases, what it is for. There can be all sorts of optional missions and tasks to be completed at any given time, far too many to keep track of.

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Of course it is great to have options and variety, but the layout is neither logical nor user-friendly and for me there is simply way too much going on; finding things or working out what they do takes far too long. I have been playing the game for five years and genuinely still don’t know what some of it does. It doesn’t impact my enjoyment of the game, because I have worked out where the things that I want are, but a first time player could quite easily be put off simply because it is all a bit of a mish-mash and ultimately too confusing to navigate.

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Do you want to go large?

Then there is the size of the game. For PUBG Mobile, the initial download is three point something GB. But once you have downloaded all the optional graphics packs and maps, you will find that you have used over 10 GB of storage. Not so much of an issue for modern platforms, but if, like me, you play on an older iPad or similar (mine is 32GB) then this will use up a chunky percentage of your available memory.

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Ban the cheats

Finally, there are some players in the game that cheat, which is always irritating, especially if you are killed by one. A number are clearly using mods, for example those that enable them to jump the height of buildings. Others can apparently see through walls to precisely locate you in a building. They will then run without pause or deviation through (in some cases really large) buildings, straight to you and kill you. And this happens too often for it to be a coincidence. Some have suggested that experienced players know the likely hiding places in buildings but I am 100% sure that there are cheats in play here.

 

However, to provide balance, I should stress that this is a small minority of players and although you might encounter one now and again it isn’t an overbearing problem. There is also the option to report players suspected of cheating which makes you feel a little better, although I have no clue whether these reports result in any action.

 

Looks great

Getting back to positives though, the graphics are excellent. The landscapes and buildings feel very real and the physics in play when navigating them, both on foot and when using a car/boat/motorbike, are fairly convincing (though the handling of the vehicles is more arcade than realistic - they do tend to take-off a little more enthusiastically over bumps and humps than they would in real life!). The lower spec. mobile version still looks fantastic, but if you play on PC, PlayStation or Xbox the game displays in a significantly higher resolution with lots more detail in the landscapes, and in particular the buildings, including more impressive textures, lighting, and varied furniture.

 

Verdict

Overall, this is a magnificent title. The controls are intuitive and are customisable. The gameplay remains fresh - while the maps don’t change too often, the changing focal point of each battle and the unpredictability of other players ensures that each game is unique. I have been playing PUBG since 2018 and I still play every evening. It is a tremendous escape; when you play you are completely in the zone - this is certainly not a game you can dip into while you are doing anything else. 

 

I have also never played a game that genuinely makes you anxious and gets the adrenalin running in the way that this does. The feeling of surviving a hectic fire fight with minimum energy remaining, or making the safe-zone after a long journey with just seconds to spare, or, best of all, nailing another player from distance with a head shot using a sniper rifle - is bloody fantastic! And spotting the last adversary and completing that final kill to get that elusive “Winner Winner Chicken Dinner” graphic at the end is utterly glorious.

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The game is beautifully put together (bar the front end) and is tremendous fun. In writing this review I have realised that I haven’t played any other title more in the last five years, which is probably the best endorsement I can offer.

 

Considering that it is a free game on mobile download, or available on XBox Game Pass, there really isn’t an excuse for not giving it a go.

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Just fantastic.

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Graphics – 85%

Solid and realistic, the console and PC versions look even better than the mobile / tablet game.

 

Sound – 94%

Possibly the best use of sound in a game I have played, very clever and perfectly implemented. When you hear another player nearby it genuinely makes your pulse race.

 

Grab Factor – 76%

Not necessarily the easiest game to get to grips with, and this isn’t helped by a fairly unpleasant front end / menu system. There are some training modules to get you used to controls but there is a lot to remember, this is definitely a game that gets easier with practice.

 

Playability – 93%

PUBG offers absolutely brilliant gameplay, and is both hugely tense to play while being tremendously fun and rewarding.

 

Verdict – 87%

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More information at:  https://pubg.com/en/main

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AG - October 2023

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Note - all pictures taken from the mobile version played on iPad. 

© Words and pictures copyright grapeswriting.com

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