PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
Developers: BlueHole, Brendan Greene
Release date Steam: 23 March 2017
The genre Battle Royale is certainly one of the most discussed in recent times in the videogame field.
But how and where did the idea of creating such a unique game mode come from?
Well, for the uninitiated the idea is taken from the Japanese novel (later also adapted cinematographically) called its own Battle Royale, in which a despotic Asian government organizes experiments and programs to terrorize the population, in this scenario a group of adolescents is left on an island with the sole purpose of starting a carnage where only one of them can survive ...
This is the centerpiece of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, whose rules are simple but severe:
100 players are parachuted to an island with nothing on them but their clothes, they will have to move freely on a vast island of 8x8 Km in search of equipment such as ammunition, weapons, sights, bulletproof vests, medicines and much, much more. The island is vast and detailed, many towns will be the battleground and are often the places where guerrilla warfare becomes more intense. There are vast wooded areas and countryside dotted with numerous farms and blocks of flats but also mountainous areas that are very difficult to travel with vehicles. Bunkers, trenches, military zones and power plants are just some of the other locations where our games will take place. Each area has its peculiarities, in city centers it will be easier to find weapons, along the roads we will be able to take vehicles (provided we have enough fuel with us) and only with experience will the player learn to choose which zone is worth or not worth exploring.
The playing area is restricted during the course of the game due to an electric dome that tightens the remaining players more and more until they are forced into close quarters. The map is vast and moving around will not be easy without the help of means, if you stay out of the dome you begin to receive damage that increases over time; staying outside of it in the last stages of the game even for a few seconds could prove fatal. Often we will find ourselves in the condition of having to run desperately inside, perhaps after having lingered too long exploring an area rich in equipment. Fortunately we will be notified in time by a message on screen, it's up to us to decide how much we want to risk finding ourselves in a dangerous area.
Some areas of the map may be the target of bombing or some planes could parachute cases containing military equipment such as camouflage suits ghillie (which turn us into real bushes very difficult to distinguish from the rest of the landscape) or high-precision rifles.
As for the equipment, PlayerUnknown's Battleground dissociates itself from its "predecessor" H1Z1 KotH which featured a crafting component, in fact in the game it is completely removed and space is made for the modification of weapons.
Viewfinder, compensators, silencers, loaders and much more can make our weapon much more effective, finding a 8x sight for a sniper rifle could change the outcome of our game!
In short, it is a game that requires an extremely tactical approach, since there is no respawn we will have to think about our actions before doing them; we will pass through moments of great tension and moments of pure adrenaline and it is precisely the alternation of these phases that makes the game always different, never boring match after match.
Let's talk about the creator of this game, Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene.
It has become known in recent years as modder for games like Arma 2 e Arma 3 and it is the mind behind H1Z1: King of the Kill, we can say that it is one of the same creators of this genre and in collaboration with the Korean studio BlueHole has decided to create what would seem for now the definitive Battle Royale.
The game modes for now differ between the solo game, that is all against all and the team game with 2 or 4 players. The possibilities multiply, therefore, and so is fun.
So far we have talked about the game only in broad terms (even if it does not seem like it!), Technically speaking PlayerUnknown is not yet fully mature, let us also remember that it is an early access game on Steam (ie under development ). In about two months since its release on the Steam platform the game has benefited from great improvements in optimization (which represented one of the biggest criticisms of the game) and on the server side, which still represents one of the weak points.
To underline the fact that despite the above average price for an alpha title, the game sold more than two million copies in about two months from the release and in a short time a vast and very active community came to support it , numerous streamer on Twitch.tv and youtuber play it and have helped make it extremely popular.
It is ultimately an interesting title that improves in all respects the other titles of its genre, although there is still a lot to do the game offers us a fun and never boring experience, with an approach halfway between the typical realistic of Arma and the arcade of H1Z1, a mixture that never tires!
Francesco Rugolo
