The premise of Player Unknown: Battlegrounds is fairly simple. Set in a Russian (we think?) landscape, it’s kill or be killed a la Battle Royale. Up to a 100 players parachute onto a small island, find weapons, vehicles and proceed to kill each other as best as they can. The map slowly decreases in size, forcing you to move closer to other players and set up killzones. I’ve been playing the game for a week or two now and while it’s frustrating at first (literally getting killed the minute you land), it makes you think and strategise.
There’s plenty of mad dashing from building to building, making sure that no one spots you in your rush. Moving from cover to cover is an important part of the game and your audio becomes a sense you’re going to want to hone. The directional sound of the game – from gunfire to footsteps – give you a sense of who is around you or what they’re doing.
Camping becomes another part of the game that’s important, especially after hearing someone open the door of the house you’re in. Here I am camping out at a balcony and struggling to hear which direction the footsteps I heard came from. It’s an intense rush, really. If you’re not into the idea of being against 99 other players by yourself, you can pair up with friends for a Duo team (against other Duos) or even as a Squad, which lets you team up with three others for a team of four.
There are 17 different weapons with several attachments each that you can pick up in houses or off players you’ve killed throughout the map. Each choice you make is important though with limited bag space for ammo, grenades and medkits or bandages.
In all, PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds is a lot like plenty of survival games (Rust, DayZ) that have been around but takes the idea of pitting yourself against other people in a simpler and much more straightforward manner. Every game you play, the adrenaline kicks in and the closer the circle gets, the more you’re going to panic.
PLAYERUNKNOWN’S Battlegrounds is out now on Steam and only available to play on Windows.