- PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is the most immersive, intense, adrenaline-pumping, winner-take-all shooter of its time. Ushering forth a new era of Battle Royale gameplay, its technical qualms are the only thing standing in the way of the path to near perfection in its gunplay and survival-first gameplay.
- PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite will no longer work for gamers in India, starting tomorrow, October 30. The company announced the development in a post on Facebook published on 29th Oct 2020. Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order I Desi Game Review I Review Ramesh. Avengers: A-Day Desi Game Review I Review Ramesh.
- Nov 19, 2020 The PUBG Global Championship is the final event and the World Championship of the 2019 Competitive Season organized by PUBG Corporation. Invited are the 32 best teams throughout the year alongside the best teams in Phase 3.
Jan 24, 2018 PUBG is a bloodsport played beneath a pantheon of fickle gods. First, you fall out of heaven. When you hit the ground, you're immediately praying that the Loot Lords put an SMG or double-barrelled.
PUBG PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds PS4 review – If and when you play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (fondly referred from herein to as ‘PUBG‘) and you get the sinking feeling that you've done this before, it's probably because you have. For the uninitiated the premise is gleefully simple – you and 99 other people are parachuted onto an island, and you must scavenge whatever weapons and equipment you can find in order to remain the last person standing. It's wonderfully straightforward and accessible stuff.
Launching some two years later than it perhaps should have, it's deeply ironic that the progenitor of the Battle Royale sub-genre has found itself late to its own party, with the likes of H1Z1 and Call of Duty's superb Blackout mode all making it to market first and each offering a supremely solid on the very same formula that PUBG itself conceived all that time ago.
PUBG Might Be Overdue On PS4 But It Remains A Staunchly Formidable Offering
Pubg Console
Nonetheless, despite PUBG's belated appearance on PlayStation hardware thanks to a period of console exclusivity on Xbox One, it's still clear that Bluehole's genre defining shooter still has it what it takes to be compellingly enjoyable in the face of its immediate competition. Certainly, there are fewer thrills more potent than the saccharine sweetness of bagging your first solo win after a tense, heart-pounding game of cat and mouse with an opponent that you know to be in the immediate vicinity.
Indeed, PUBG swiftly reveals itself to be a fantastic author of emergent stories that manifest from the battlegrounds of its open-world theater. In one instance, a pin drop can be heard as your prone form inches across a dramatically elevated rooftop, looking to gain a distant kill-shot on an unexpected enemy, all the while you scan the horizons for others who may be looking to do the same thing.
In another, a protracted, loud and chaotic firefight through the winding, maze-like streets of a ruined city husk provides almost innumerable opportunities for on-the-hoof strategy, as you furiously dodge from doorway to doorway, bursting through entrances, climbing buildings and leaping from one structure to another in order to gain the optimum positional advantage over your encroaching aggressors.
As such, and regardless your skill level at either PUBG or even shooters in general, the beginning of each and every game of PUBG always manages to feel like a fresh, new beginning – an opportunity to refine your craft and seek out some new hidden alcove in the world from which to affect your murderous enterprise. In this sense then, clearly hasn't lost a step in its overdue journey onto Sony's home console – crucially, just about anyone can find some degree of satisfaction with PUBG's Battle Royale gameplay.
In terms of modes, PUBG is a relatively threadbare prospect – there are the usual solo and squad based modes and not much else to speak of. An upside of PUBG being released so late on PS4, means that this version of the game is able to benefit from all of the new maps, weapon and vehicle content that has been released for the game to date – a fact that makes PUBG an arguably more muscular offering than many of its peers.
PUBG Both Survives And Falters In Comparison With Its Peers
Additionally, being able to choose from a range of modifications, such as scopes, stocks, extended magazines and more to modify the various firearms that PUBG offers also proves to be a welcome revelation; and one which elevates the experience yet further beyond its genre equivalents. Likewise, PUBG also offers the ability to use a variety of different melee weapons too, such as firearms, sickles and machetes – though ultimately the unfortunate clumsiness of PUBG's close quarters combat renders such endeavors hardly enticing to say the least.
Pubg Review 2019
Further afield, PUBG mirrors the likes of H1Z1 by boasting a progression system that is solely concerned with cosmetic advancement, rather than anything deeper which might encroach on the balance of its combat. Providing random cosmetic spitting loot crates that can be purchased by using PUBG's in-game currency (‘BP' or Battle Points), players can either opt to purchase a bunch of this money from the store, or, complete numerous in-game objectives and just simply win games in order to grind the old fashioned way.
Where PUBG compares less favorably to its genre ilk is in a range of audiovisual and UI areas. First off, the framerate in PUBG is far below that of something like H1Z1 or Call of Duty's Blackout mode. Hovering around the 30fps mark but often dipping down beyond that in heated encounters (something that is exacerbated on standard PS4 hardware), PUBG simply doesn't move as smoothly as it needs to which has a direct impact on how responsive it is. Certainly, folks looking for PUBG to mirror the silky smoothness of those aforementioned competing offerings will be disappointed.
Elsewhere, with fairly low detail textures, poor shadowing effects and flat lighting, it's not unreasonable to say that PUBG is somewhat of an ugly duckling in its current state, too. Though in fairness, PUBG's maps are much larger and more complex than any other Battle Royale effort on the market, so it's clear where the technical trade-offs have been made.
Then there is the UI. With its numerous weapon upgrades and item configurations, PUBG is a fairly sophisticated beast to say the least and annoyingly, the UI doesn't exactly help matters. Whereas in H1Z1 you can instantly access a handy radial interface to switch between your various weapons and equipment, in PUBG you have to physically open up a separate inventory screen to use the weapon mods you've picked up or even drop gear that you no longer want to keep. It's hardly an intuitive solution for a game in which every second counts and immediate, game-ending attacks can come from literally anywhere.
Then there are other niggles, too. If you're playing in a squad with other folk, there is no way at all to either lower the volume (if they're being too loud), or mute them entirely (if they're being assholes) – a baffling omission given how basic and fundamental such functionality is for online play. Another strange omission of basic functionality manifests itself during spectator mode. If you decide to spectate after you've died, you literally have to wait until the game is finished as there is no way to leave before then. Frustrating? Yes, absolutely.
If You Were Looking Forward To PUBG We Have Glad Tidings – It's Still Good
It's an odd sort of testament to the strength and stubborn appeal of PUBG's core gameplay that the array of flaws and technical shortcomings which exist in its orbit aren't enough to pull the whole affair down into the doldrums of mediocrity. With each and every game affording some sort of fresh opportunity to take part in any number of emergent battlefield stories, PUBG would seem to boast an evergreen appeal that hasn't been significantly dulled in the intervening years between the apex of its popularity and its overdue release on PS4.
All the same, with such fierce competition from the likes of H1Z1 and Call of Duty soon to be joined by EA with Battlefield V's promising Firestorm mode and the incoming Realm Royale, it's clear that PUBG will need to evolve at a far more rapid rate than it has up until now in order to stay relevant. In the present however, folks who were feverishly looking forward to PUBG's PS4 debut can rest easy – it's exactly how you thought it would be – for better or worse.
Review code supplied by publisher.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is out now on PS4, Xbox One, PC and mobile devices.
Player Unknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) lit the world on fire in 2017. It sold millions before it even left Early Access on Steam, and kicked off the battle royale gaming craze we're experiencing right now. Not too long ago this FPS juggernaut landed on mobile.
In PUBG you play as a mercenary who parachutes, along with up to 99 other players, onto an island. Once they land, players scavenge for weapons, ammo, armor, and other supplies in a last-man-standing death match. The game's map starts large, but quickly shrinks as the electrical storm around the island collapses into progressively smaller circles, forcing players together as the game goes on.
It's a simple concept with tons of room for complexity. You land on an island with 99 other people and only your fists. Find a gun and stay in the circle. Last one standing wins. Is it worth playing? That's what we aim to find out in this PUBG Mobile review.
Features
The Mobile version of PUBG has pretty much all the features of its PC counterpart, with a few exceptions. The game only offers PUBG's original map, Erangel — an abandoned, vaguely Eastern European 8km x 8km island. Everything from the PC version of this map — from the abandoned military base to the burned out nuclear power plant — has made it to the Mobile version of the game.
The mobile version of PUBG has pretty much all the features of its PC counterpart.
All the weapons, gear, and vehicles available when PUBG first exited Early Access are here too. The guns it's added since are absent, as is the game's second map, Miramar.
The game is totally free. You can login as either a guest or with Facebook to play. Gameplay and daily login rewards will earn your account experience and battle points, which can be spent on crates which contain a random piece of clothing for your character. Unlike in the PC version, you don't start with any available clothing, but getting at least a pair of pants doesn't take too long.
Getting crates is pretty quick.
The matchmaking works pretty quickly when queueing in squad, duo, or solo mode, though many of the options from the PC version are absent. Creating a private custom match doesn't seem to be possible just yet. There's a menu option for creating a 'room,' but it appears to be for creating chat rooms, and also doesn't seem to actually work yet.
I never had to wait long to be matched with a squad, though connection issues were pretty common. Every team I played with had at least one player disconnect at the outset of the game. I never ran into any connection issues when I played, but at least one teammate was unresponsive in most games.
The game has built-in voice chat, which works, though it feels like most players just use their phone's speaker for a mic. If the mic is on the bottom of the phone, as is common, it can lead to some pretty annoying extra noise when players' palms rub against it.
Gameplay
It's all well and good if PUBG Mobile faithfully recreates the island's geography and lets you use all the guns and drive all the cars of the original game, but if the controls aren't up to the task, everything falls apart.
To be clear: the controls in PUBG Mobile aren't as good or accurate as the PC version. Duh.
The game uses virtual joysticks for player movement and camera control, and a big button with a bullet on the right will shoot your gun. It's a little clumsy at first, but actually feels pretty fluid after a few games.
It's a little clumsy at first, but actually feels pretty fluid after a few games.
The game offers a few different control options to make everything feel a bit better and get rid of the awkwardness of hunting for buttons you can't find by feel. A floating shoot button, which moves to wherever your thumb last touched, makes shooting as simple as tapping where your finger already is, rather than having to reorient your hand to reach the spot that fires the gun. Items are automatically picked up, sorted, and equipped in game, which cuts down on some tedious menu management. The game also offers gyroscopic control options, which I've never enjoyed, but some swear by.
Little touches like automatic item pickup improve playability a lot.
PUBG Mobile tips and tricks: How to survive and win a battle royale
Even with those options, the game still feels a little clumsy. That clumsiness actually impacts what kinds of tactics and gameplay are effective. In the PC version, snipers can be pretty dominant. Erangel is a pretty wide open map, there are long stretches of relatively even terrain dotted with hills. Finding a good vantage point to pick people off isn't hard. The precision of a mouse and keyboard makes this even easier.
Fights in PUBG Mobile are more oriented around mid- and close-range engagements. It's hard to hit people really consistently at a distance in this game. It's even harder when accounting for bullet drop. Automatic weapons, as well as shotguns, with their wider reticles, seem especially potent here.
Driving and shooting is a more viable strategy late in the game.
Vehicles often play a larger combat role too. In the PC version of PUBG, vehicles become a liability as the map gets smaller — they're big, loud, and hard to miss. In PUBG Mobile, they're actually pretty easy to miss. A fast moving target like a jeep, especially with someone in the passenger seat with a gun, can very easily ride around the perimeter of the circle and pick people off, even near the end of the game.
Performance
What makes PUBG a pretty good-looking game on PC is more or less missing in the Mobile version. The lighting and particle effects that really sell the game's look have all been pretty much stripped out, and probably for good reason. Those kinds of elements can be pretty demanding for hardware. The result is a pretty bland-looking recreation. The terrain, characters, and weapons all look more or less the same as the PC version, just with muddier, lower-resolution textures.
The game really struggles to run when dropping onto the island.
The game ran pretty steady on my LG G6, but it definitely had its fair share of hiccups. I wouldn't recommend playing on anything much older than that. I tried loading the game on its minimum iOS option, the iPhone 5s, and it crashed before loading the main menu every single time. I'd imagine Android phones of a similar age would struggle just as much.
Pubg Review 2019
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Regular gameplay ran fine most of the time. There were almost always serious frame rate drops when parachuting down to the island, but that's not totally shocking. It cleared up as soon as I landed, when the game no longer had to render the whole island.
The audio is pretty awful. In most versions of PUBG, hearing the direction and volume of noises like gunshots and footsteps is pretty important to learning an enemy's location. It's a lot harder to tell this information in the mobile version. Footsteps were especially loud and all sounded pretty much the same to me. Regardless of where they were, once someone was within 15 or 20 feet of me, it all sounded the same. It all sounded bad too.
Conclusion
You don't need to be as calculating to go far in PUBG Mobile. Part of that is due to the inclusion of bots at early levels, which let you get used to the game's controls without being totally exposed to its normally rather punishing difficulty. Even then, the game's imprecise controls make for a looser, less tense experience. I think that's a shame.
What really makes PUBG great on PC is the tension of having to methodically make it to the middle of the map as you alternate between cat and mouse, never knowing where the next enemy will pop up. It's a very different kind of shooter experience than most games, and a lot of that is missing in PUBG Mobile.
PUBG Mobile is fun, but it's not very tense.
PUBG Mobile is fun, but it's not as tense as its PC counterpart. The stakes feel lower, and it misses out on a lot of what makes the PC version of the game so special — In essence, it feels a little hollow.
PUBG has gotten numerous updates and improvements since it launched. PUBG Mobile has received a similar treatment with a number of major updates to the game, including the new Sanhok map. You can keep up with the new updates on our official patch notes page. Also, be aware that some markets can download PUBG Mobile Lite, a version of the game that can run on lower-end or older smartphones.
If you're looking for a new mobile shooter, you could do a lot worse than PUBG Mobile. The game is all there, it works, and it's free. But if you want the same strategic, nail-biting experience of the PC version, you may be a little disappointed.
Read Next: PUBG mobile vs Fortnite mobile: Which battle royale wins?
What do you think of PUBG Mobile? Let us know your thoughts in the comments, also be sure to check out our PUBG Mobile tips and tricks feature, as well as our PUBG Mobile update tracker.
That's it for our PUBG Mobile review. Looking for more first person shooters for mobile? Be sure to check out our best mobile FPS guide.
