GAME PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS

Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds Bluehole Studio Inc., PUBG Corporation GAME REVIEW

BY DAVID WILLEM L. MOLENAAR

Last-man-standing games have been with us for quite a while now, featuring in a lot of games in the early 2000s and up to this day we still see it in new title releases. Released in early 2017, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds popularized the game genre still selling over 10 million game copies in the six months of its initial release. Coupled with a rapidly growing community of game enthusiasts, the numbers just keep going higher.

Inspired by the film Battle Royale in 2000, the game was developed by Korean game development company PUBG Corporation— a subsidiary of Korean publisher Bluehole. The movie was about how the Japanese government captured ninth-grade students and forced them to kill each other on a deserted island. Game Director and Head Designer Brendan Greene created the game using the most successful video game engine, Unreal Engine 4— the same engine used in Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds is a PC game at most but you would also be able to play it on Xbox One.

The pre-game lobby starts in a small island filled with all the players that are about to engage in a battle to the death. There is an in-game option to enable your microphone to talk to the other players, granted that they are standing near your character in the game. With this feature, one could expect the inevitable virtual death threats and trash talking this game brings. Surprisingly, the community is quite nice and respectful. Some players use this feature to form an alliance between other players before the 60-second pre-start timer ends. I doubt one minute would be enough time to know if the other players are really your allies or enemies, though. After all, they could just shoot you behind your back.

At the end of the pre-game lobby, all players are set to travel to a larger island via cargo plane with the back door of the aircraft open. Players are free to parachute down wherever they want in the island. As soon as they land, they’re free to roam and do whatever they wish to do. Most of the time, players would loot houses and bunkers everywhere around the map just so they would be ready for when they encounter another player. As for the other players, they just want to roam around and enjoy the scenery.

In an island filled with 100 players who all want to be the last man standing, there really isn’t any other strategy in this game but to play smart and be cautious. Loots and vehicles randomly spawn on the map so it’s quite hard to set a specific area to loot and think you’re all set. Even if having the best guns and armour in the game would yield advantageous, running on an open field with a sniper around is still a kamikaze wish.

The thrill you get as you enter the top twenty is just something you simply can’t ignore. You start to have perfect posture while sitting down and your vision seems to enter a whole new level of clarity. You tend to hold your

breath longer and feel anxious with everything that moves. Nothing beats the hype-inducing moment as you near the compelling “Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!” victory. Games of this genre make its players experience the feeling of triumph over one’s adversaries at the cost of well, a bloodbath of all proportions. In this game, finishing last is definitely better than finishing first.

P l a y e r u n k n o w n ’ s Battlegrounds is currently just in its beta version; the game is in its early form and the final release of it is yet to be made public. Hence, it is poorly optimized and leaves even the expensive video cards to suffer with a case of heating due to maximum workloads. So you can expect your laptop or desktop to sound like an air conditioner while you are playing the game. There are also a

lot of bugs and glitches in the game that would sometimes cause it to randomly crash; you would have to restart and reconnect to the game you are currently in. At least they do give users the option to reconnect if some unintentional interruption comes up (e.g. unstable internet connection and overheating hardware.)

Overall, the game has so much potential so there is no doubt why players are so passionate about it. It allows players to log in, click play, and simply enjoy—no more heavy backstory, no more complex game mechanics to learn before playing, no more pay to win. It is every casual gamer’s dream to play this game, may it be solo play or multiplayer; either way, players can expect the peak of enjoyment. So what do you think? Got what it takes to be the best of all 100? I’ll see you in game. S