🚀 go-pugleaf

I've been playing Player Unknown's Battlegrounds for about a week.  I
think it is the first game since the release of Doom (2016) to give me
the urge for "one more round" -- urge enough so that I want to carve
out time to go play it, something that I'm not often inspired to do
these days.  And that urge comes at the end of almost each round, it's
hard to stop playing.  Every round feels like a different game in a
huge world.

All too often I load up a game that has good reviews, and I'm
underwhelmed or just can't find reason to keep playing it.  I suppose
it's normal to wonder "is this what getting old feels like?  Am I
losing my interest in gaming?"

But then a title like PUBG comes along, and reminds me that it's not
me, it's the flood of useless titles that is the problem.  I can gauge
a great game by one that forces me to play it when I really should be
getting work done.  Not many games do that.  I remember when the
original Counterstrike mod came out, I was working off-site at the
time.  I found the mod for HL to be so stunningly addictive that I
called in sick the next day so I could focus on getting better at it.
I saw the potential even in the first release.  It was an oh-my-god
moment for anyone with an inclination toward tactical team games, and
this is why it (well the modern version which is CS:GO) is one of the
most widely played online games even 18 years later (and while the
graphics have been updated slightly, the game fundamentals have not
changed much during that time).

If you're not familiar with PUBG, don't get too distracted by the
references I've already made to Counterstrike above.  PUBG has very
little in common with Counterstrike aside from the fact it involves
guns and is highly addictive.  PUBG is sort of  like DayZ without
zombies, or H1Z1 King of the Hill maybe.  It's a "survival" game that
focuses on that -- just staying alive.  You're not crafting things,
managing your food supply, or any of that.  You parachute out of a
plane onto the map (as do your opponents), and then it's every man for
himself.  You choose when to jump, and the map is large, so you might
touch down in an isolated spot far from everyone else, or you might
choose to jump relatively close to others in order to get into combat
sooner.  Wherever you land, your first goal is to equip yourself with
guns, ammo, bandages, etc. which you obtain by looting buildings. They
are placed randomly, so if your goal is to find an assault rifle early
on (a good idea), you might find it in the first 60 seconds of play or
it might take you 5 minutes to find one.  You might be faced with just
sticking to a shotgun and pistol (both are effective weapons in their
own right) or whatever you have been able to find thus far.

However, you don't have all day to search for what you need, or to
randomly explore.  The "play area" radius shrinks in increments, and
one of your goals is to stay within the circle.  If you've ever played
the 1-vs-1 hacker mode of Watch_Dogs, you get the basic idea.  At
first you can roam wherever, but as time goes by the area you stay
within becomes more focused based on a circular radius that's
displayed on a map.  This has the effect of causing players to rally
progressively closer together, increasing the frequency of
confrontation.  It becomes increasingly intense because as you
approach the area, you're aware there is an increasing chance of a foe
having reached the area before you did.  Is he sitting up on a hill,
prone, waiting for others to arrive?  (Don't worry, there are no
sniper rifles in this game as far as I can tell, or this could make
for an impossible scenario... and it would be hard for him to snipe
from very long range with an assault rifle, although it can be fun to
hear the bullets richocheting as he tries).  But still, every time you
enter a building, you wonder if an opponent has already set up camp in
there?  You will find yourself stopping, and listening very careful
for sounds that could indicate nearby movement.  This is part of the
fun!  But, you don't have time to be TOO cautious, because time is
limited due to the shrinking play area.  Headphones are pretty much a
requirement in this game, because you need to not only be listening
for very subtle noises, but when you hear not so subtle noises
(gunfire) you need to know exactly what direction its coming from so
that you can take cover.  I've never been a headphones person, but
since acquiring the Siberia 840s (the king of all wireless gaming
headphones), I've become a believer, and there are some games that
just cannot be played as effectively with speakers.

Aside from movement noises (footsteps for the most part) and gunfire,
there aren't many other noises in the game.  Its you versus everyone
else (there are usually 90+ other players in the matches I've been
in), but the only time you hear anyone speak over VOIP is during the
preparation for a match phase (less than 1 minute) or on the plane
ride before the jump.  There's always going to be at least one or two
morons in both areas, so I usually just mute my audio until I'm ready
to jump from the plane.  One of my favorite PC accessories is a USB
dedicated volume control.  It looks sort of like a hockey puck, and
when I don't want to hear moronic voices, I just tap the top of it to
mute the PC audio (and likewise turn it for up or down).  Very easy to
mute and unmute without looking at it, it sits on my desk a few inches
from my mouse. I used to have volume controls on my keyboard in days
past, but when I switched to mechanical switch keyboards I found that
I could no longer rely on this as a feature (and turning volume up or
down or muting using Windows controls is not an acceptable solution
mid-game).

Even though the premise of this game isn't really unique, the
execution of it is very far beyond it's competitors.  If you read
feedback from other players, you'll hear them say this is the game
that the DayZ and H1Z1 variants wanted to be.

Word of warning -- if dying frustrates you, you may not like it.  This
is not a game where you score a lot of kills.  It is a game where you
can spend several minutes stockpiling the perfect gear load out, only
to take a bullet to the head by someone who has been stalking you for
the last several minutes, or someone who was camping inside a
structure just waiting to blow an intruder away.  Your goal here is to
simply survive as long as possible.  Your goal is to be the last man
standing, and the closest I've even been able to come is to be in the
top 18 remaining on a 100 player map.  However, as you get better, you
last longer and longer each round, so that each round is quite
satisfying even though you know how it's likely to turn out.  I don't
think anyone wins 1st place in this game consistently.

It is based on the Unreal engine, and it proves that it is possible to
have a massively multiplayer, huge outdoor world without all the
performance problems of the Arma engine games. It's early access, but
feels finished enough to me.  It is a third AND first person game
(which you might as well play in third person as it of course gives
you the "look around trees" advantage), but supposedly they are coming
out with a hardcore mode that will be first-person only, and will not
allow third-person perspective.  

Don't let that turn you off though, it is plenty of fun and well worth
the price even in third person mode.

In terms of the best way to get started, the basic strategy I have for
starting out is to try to land in a spot with a decent number of
buildings (to equip weapons and supplies), but that also gives you
easy access to roads, and puts enough distance between you and other
players initially.  The reason is you want to try to find a vehicle
early in the game, because this will make it easier to quickly travel
the map as the play zone radius shrinks.  Quicker travel means more
time you can spend improving your equipment loadout (and also avoiding
enemies early in the game -- let them all kill each other for a while
as you stay focused on the goal of getting to the center of the play
zone).

It's a nice game.  There's a reason it is at the top of the Steam
sales charts selling over four million copies in the first three
months.