PUBG: Battlegrounds (2017)

I bought PUBG back when it first launched, and even then I came to one simple conclusion: I wasn't playing to shoot other people - I was playing so other people could shoot me.

Sure, there were moments when I had fun. Sometimes I'd even wipe out an entire squad. But nothing ever protected me from getting one-shot by a Kar98k to the head.

Recently, I decided to reinstall the game to see how much it had changed. Visually, it barely feels different. There are skins now, Fortnite-style emotes, battle passes, and all the usual live-service stuff. But I was so happy to discover that I can still get instantly deleted... this time by an Uzi from a couple of meters away. Yep, it's pretty much the exact same gameplay I remember from years ago.

PUBG even made me think that SBMM might actually be a good thing. I was surprised to end up in a lobby with a level 200+ player (I honestly have no idea what those levels even mean - they didn't exist when I used to play). This might be a controversial take, but I actually enjoyed Fortnite more. I mostly play zero build, which has SBMM and overall feels much more welcoming to casual players.

What's even more ironic is that I had a more forgiving and enjoyable experience in PUBG Mobile than I did in the PC version.

Skill issue? 1000%.

Is PUBG a bad game? Honestly, probably not.

Do I have any desire to spend dozens or even hundreds of hours getting good at it? Not really.

Very good battle royale. It has a more realistic tone compared to the arcade of its competition, which I personally like.

I find the game very fun and addictive. Like the rest of the games of its genre, it can be a little frustrating at first, but as you improve and get to know its maps and mechanics, you will have a great time. And it certainly doesn't take long to acclimatise. Ideal for playing with friends.

I recommend it if you like the genre. 8/10

Regards.

PUBG was the first Battle Royale game I played, when the genre was still new for me. I liked its style of playing, with the arena that got smaller over time, finding weapons to defend yourself against other players and the teamwork when playing with friends.

My fun however, was short-lived with this game. This was mainly because I thought it looks and feels a little empty. I played many times with friends, and even then, I got this feeling. Normally when I play any game with friends, this is not the case, so for me, I knew that this was not a game that I would play for many years.

The graphics in PUBG are a little boring. I did not expect shiny next generation visuals or something, but everything is almost the same color, green grasslands with a orange sky. It looks kind of realistic, like everyday life, but the whole atmosphere just felt hollow. The sound effects from weapons are great and get close to realism.

The controls and movement are a little stiff and felt a little slow. This is mainly because of the big world you are walking in, making a mile really feel like a mile.

My problem, as always, with this kind of games, is that I am just not skilled enough. I try very hard to stay alive and kill another player, but they are always faster than me. Well, in a game like Counter Strike for example, this is fine, I respawn immediately and can try again and might get some kills and streaks afterwards. But with games like PUBG, you walk around, collect stuff, do not see a living soul in sight and then Bam, dead. For me, the game is over and I need to find another server to play on.

Then you got the fact that this game felt like Battlefield 2, my arch nemesis when talking online shooters. Massive open, empty world, walk for miles and miles, and then get shot. It was some sort of Vietnam flashback for me and I immediately disliked the game by the second.

The biggest problem, that has been patched if I am not mistaken, was that players could turn down their graphics to potato mode, in which grass and foliage disappeared. This gave them a huge advantage over players that were hiding in the grass to avoid being killed. For me, this almost killed all the fun I had with the game at the time.

In the end, PUBG was fun for a couple of hours, and I had some joy with it, but with the knowledge of today, I prefer Apex Legends over this one anytime.

For me personally, I would not recommend this game.

I've tried a lot of online shooters. PUBG is massively popular around the world and you can tell when queuing up to play with random squads. I have been playing this a lot the last few months (due to my PS4 overheating and can only handle certain games) and I've met so many new 'friends' from around the globe. (The in-game only friends list is brilliant for that). I like the pace and the looting and the unpredictability, as you can play serious or you can goof around with your friends - regardless, PUBG is a solid time!

just started to play this. Seemed fun with a friend. Going to get a squad of a few together to coordinate. Seems to be the best way to play this and enjoy it.

My initial conclusion is that the Battle Royale formula is just going to be a hit or miss for different players. I think with my friend it's a miss. He doesnt like doing a 20 min match where he doesnt see much action or feel like he was 'useful.' (He likes MOBA games and finds them more satisfactory because both during as well as at the end of the match he will see stats or know his actions had a tangible result in how the match ended) I guess with me it's a hit, because I like the almost texas hold 'em like formulaic strategy of just having a system that sometimes works out and sometimes doesnt but in the end, you strive to get better on the system itself even if you dont have a substantially good match, and the matches itself are the test bed for it.

Haven't played it long enough to decide if it's better than the newer CS:GO's version "Danger Zone", but I feel CS:GO Danger Zone is more straight forward and has better maps. But vehicles in this are really nice, as is the ability to add attachments to a rifle allowing you to turn it into a sniper. (You can't do that in CS:GO and if you dont have a ranged option you're probably screwed)

Since this is now free, you ought to give it a chance if you like FPS games to decide which side of the spectrum you fall.

This is like my guilty pleasure. I come back to this game every like, 3 months, then immediately stop after 3 days. This game was great in early access and fun, and I think it still holds up, but when it started to try to become like another battle royale game with a cartoony style (hmm, I wonder what it is) when it obviously wasn’t that, it just fell apart. Obviously it has talent and merit put into it, but it’s fallen apart over these years and struggled to maintain relevancy,

PROS:

• Joining a match is really efficient in this game. There’s no janky system or waiting for 10 minutes before you ultimately disconnect. The UI is easy to navigate and the plenty of modes to pick from create a ton more content to discover.

• Like I said, when it was more of it’s own thing, it changed the battle royale scene. Gunplay is smooth and there’s no personal bias for a place or weapon, and if you do fail, it’s most likely your fault and never the games poorly designed map or gameplay (gameplay-wise, I’ll elaborate on that later).

• The graphics are great, it can run fairly well on consoles and trying it on my old middle-end PC on mid-setting, there’s no big change. Each place in the map feels distinctive and it creates a nice atmosphere (something that I would never say about any other Battle Royale game).

CONS:

• The game, after you master it, gets so boring. That’s why I got over it after a while. There’s no real reason to come back other than updates, whereas, dare I say it, stuff like Fortnite is something that people can easily play daily. Even if you suck at it, you won’t be encouraged to get better, you’ll probably just quit.

• The game is so fucking buggy. Oh, it’s a legit hole that leads you under the map, oh the car is now flying, yes, I know these are being fixed. But there are still countless others that make the game frustrating and unplayable with tons of hackers ruining the experience.

• The game is unfair when it relies on server lag, and the player having a high-end PC, luckily that’s doesn’t affect me, but if people are literally paying (for an online game that depends on your PC that’s a bit overpriced) that’s truly unfair.

Like, I really want to love this game like a ton of people do. I really want to be part of the community who admires this game and spend a ton of time mastering it. But even at this rate, when it’s about 3 years old, no. It feels unfinished and broken, and there really was a justification for moving to Fortnite. I really hope the team fixes these problems, which they won’t, even after they’ve been requested to fix these problems millions of times. I think this is the one that I feel people can disagree on, just like my Minecraft review, cause like I said, it’s subjective. How you play, how you interact, and how you feel about it’s oversaturation is up to you. That’s it for now.

I really liked PUBG at the beginning, when you needed to have a good strategy. Trying to survive, hiding and shooting when it was really necessary.

But then they tried to attract players trying to be more like Fortnite, doing the matches more frenetic, more action and less strategy.

Ah.. of course.. the cheating players don't help. It was a good game indeed but.. not anymore.

This review is for the base version of the Playstation 4.

I purchased this game from the playstation store for £25. This is a hefty price to pay for what is simply an online only survival based shooter. I say this because the execution and finish of this title is so poor. Let me explain why:

Gameplay
First off, it is extremely apparent as soon as you boot up the game for the first time that this is a bad PC port, and I can finally understand the suffering that PC gamers endure when console games a poorly ported to PC. Perhaps the biggest frustration is that the majority of the control mapping doesn't make sense at all for PS4, for example; to reload a gun you must hold square, to move around the map you must use the right analogue stick and hold R1, in order to equip and dequip attachments the buttons sometimes swap depending on the context etc. Couple this with a horrible inventory system and it's safe to say that my first few games felt like I was back to the clunky controls of the Playstation 1. If they could update their inventory system so that it's easier to equip/remove attachments, and generally streamline the experience to make it as fast and effortless as possible then that would make the overall gameplay a lot better.

As for the gameplay loop itself, yeah it's fun. Searching for better and better loot, making sure you're always on the move to avoid the ever closing circle, it never gets old, thankfully. Having the option to play solo, duo, or squad is a nice edition although you will definitely need voice chat communication if you're wanting to succeed as there is very little in the way of contextual pinging etc as seen in Apex Legends. On the subject of communcation, the text and icons in a lot of cases is pretty much unreadable. When planning your drop location you are able to drop a waypoint on the map, except that this waypoint is the size of a small pea, and you're often left with shouting "WHERE ARE WE DROPPING".

The overwall takeaway from the gameplay, if you're still reading, is that it is surprisingly fun and addictive IF you have a friend to play with. There are some tense and genuinely funny moments that can happen, and the best part is that due to the nature of the game, every match is unique, providing different experiences.

Controlls
Although mentioioned above, I am making a seperate section to talk about the control settings as this can be a life saver, and it actually makes me quite angry that these settings aren't explained more/made default.

The first thing that I advise everyone to change is the general sensitivity, over shoulder sensitivity, and the various first person sensitivies (there's different settings for each zoom level). The default sensitivity is far too slow and actually makes you feel incredibly bad at the game as you fail to aim and shoot people. The next setting I would advice is to change the default firing to auto for all guns, that way if you're in a rush and pick up an automatic gun next to an enemy, you can unload the whole magazine into them without having to change the firing mode first. The last setting is automatic reload, although I have switched this on, I have no idea whether it is working, or whether it even refers to reloading without having to hold square. So yeah, unsure on that one.

Graphics
The game doesn't look great, I'll say that straight off the bat. Is this a problem? Not in my opinion as gameplay comes before graphical presentation when it comes to large scale games like this. What is a problem though is optimization. Sure, I accept the PS2 level graphics, but please at least ensure that there are no frame rate drops or network lag. I cannot understand why this has not yet been fixed, or even more so why the game was allowed to release with maps as big as they are, if the PS4 simply cannot handle them. But yeah, there is not much else to say about the graphics.

Sound
Audio plays a big part in batte royale games, and for obvious reasons. Thankfully, this is where pubg actually succeeds. Foot steps are a handy indicator, the soft thuds of shoes hitting floor boards above you in buildings is very well done, and generally things such as gun fire and explosions are well mixed, giving you (most of the time) a sense of direction when wearing headphones. With this being said, the sense of direction in relation to audio doesn't always work with gun ffire in close/medium range combat. It is possible to know the position of an enemy from gun fire that is in the distance, but as soon as you're being hit in medium to close range combat, almost all sense of direction goes out the window as you attempt to find cover. This could however quite simply be panic kicking in as you try and escape imminent death.

Verdict
I really wanted Player Unknowns Battlegrounds to be a raging success, and a joy to play, but what I'm left with is anger towards the developers for not fixing blatantly obvious issues that have been in the game since lauch. I would forgive these issues if the game were free to play, or perhaps half the asking price, but allowing the game to be released at full price, in the state it's in, is morally wrong in my opinion.

This game has huge potential, and can still be fun if you have a friend that is willing to play with you. But this cannot excuse the behaviour of the developers and their attitude towards support for the PS4 version of the game.

2/5 Stars, unfortunately.