PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) Review

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or PUBG, is known to many as the game that truly launched the Battle Royale genre. While other battle royale games have captured players’ attention in the U.S., PUBG remains popular internationally, at least in part due to is ease of accessibility on mobile platforms.

The Genesis of PUBG

In playing this game, it’s important to understand its genesis. Most games rely on years of assets and development from a large company. But the credit for PUBG largely belongs to a single person — PlayerUnknown — who developed the concept based on his ARMA 2 mod DayZ: Battle Royale.

That means that from the beginning, PUBG could never be as flashy as games like Fortnite. When PUBG started, it simply didn’t have the means or resources to become that technologically sound. Of course, as Twitch streamers began to play it, PUBG became tremendously popular, and the rest is history. The Epic Games staff even once cited PUBG as the inspiration for Fortnite: Battle Royale (which eventually resulted in a lawsuit).

Pacing

Today, there are countless games in the battle royale arena, but it’s unlikely any of them would exist without PUBG. This military-style simulator allows a player to loot buildings and destroy opponents while a series of damaging circles forces players closer together until only one person or team survives.

With the influx of battle royale games that have recently hit the market, it’s almost hard to go back in time to try to understand how PUBG caused so much hype pre-Fortnite. While a player new to the battle royale genre might find it slower paced, it has its fanbase in a niche audience. People who switch to PUBG are typically those who find other battle royale games too fast-paced — and they’re a rare breed. But that’s why PUBG players are often diehards.

Gameplay

Newer players can load into a training mode, but for anyone who has played a battle royale game before, the basics are fairly straightforward: Drop in, get the best loot, kill enemies, and be the last player or team to survive.

Over the last few years, it’s been a bit of race for creators of new battle royale games to see what they can do to make their games different from others. PUBG has multiple maps, which adds some much-needed variety in a game where looting and map movement can take significantly longer than it does in competing games. In fact, everything in this game seems to move a bit slower, including load times, character speeds and gunfights.