Winner, winner chicken dinner! PUBG is the first game to popularize the Battle royale genre.
Playerunknown’s Battleground, commonly knowns as PUBG has its roots deep in the modding scene of ARMA 2&3. Where the game’s lead developer Brendan Greene, also known as Playerunknown, developed the battle royale style gamemode in. After the huge popularity in the ARMA modding scene. Greene started his own company in pursuit of creating, the battle royale experience in a new game of his own. Eventually the PUBG was born and released in open beta in the early 2017.
In its early access state, the game broke Steam selling records, and even surpassed biggest Valve titles CS:GO and Dota 2 in player numbers in late August 2017. At the end of the year, the game finally got its full 1.0 release and an Xbox One port alongside it.
The PUBG is a free for all battle royale, where the last person, or group alive wins the game. Each game starts within a big cargo plane flying above the map, giving players option to choose when to drop out and land along the way. The two maps featured in the game are large and varied, with different landscapes, locations and buildings to explore and loot. Over time the play area shrinks, forcing players to encounter eventually.
PUBG’s popularity is a fascinating thing, but I think the essence of it comes from the background it came from: The ARMA mods, which combined the hardcore military simulation, with the survival aspect and the intense PvP action. In these games you valued your life way more than in faster paced shooters. The core idea of PUBG rouses your own survival instincts, the “kill or be killed” attitude literally gets your heart pounding with adrenaline, and the constant looming fear of death is present at all times.
Now PUBG, and the battle royale formula, of short 30-minute games, pack in all what was great about in the earlier survival mods: looting, gathering the equipment, setting up a plan with your buddy, and then trying to survive to your best. The key notion here is the time, PUBG does all this in just 30 minutes, when before that could take several hours. Short rounds and intense situations filled with adrenaline, make PUBG a very addicting experience, especially when played with a friend, or a group of friends.
Now the game has had fair share of bugs, glitches, bad optimization and server performance, especially in the early access state, and some of these problems are still present in the current version. As of now, the game is still very much in development and further optimization and bug fixing is surely needed. In addition, new content, such as maps, vehicles, equipment and weapons would be nice additions to prolong the game’s “shelf life” in the future.
Currently PUBG remains one of the hottest online experiences on PC, it is easy and fun to grab few friends and have a couple of rounds of quick and exciting gameplay, that always keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Developer: PUBG Corporation
Publisher: PUBG Corporation
Release Date: 20.12.2017 (PC)
Platform: PC, Xbox One
Category: Multiplayer, Battle Royale
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