PUBG: Battlegrounds Free-to-Play Review - 2022

ign.com:

It’s been nearly five whole years since the pioneering PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds first appeared on Steam and popularized the idea of pitting 100 players against each other until only the best (or last) among them survives. Since then, the original battle royale has been locked in a fight for relevance against the many games it inspired, and only now has it dropped its entry fee and joined the ranks of its free-to-play competition. Now that the novelty has worn off, in some ways PUBG has been left wanting compared to newer and more innovative battle royales, but its unique focus on massive zones and realistic simulation means it hasn’t lost its touch either.

Survival after parachuting into PUBG’s relatively realistic open world requires you to be much stealthier and more deliberately tactical than you would in, say, the run-and-gun style of Fortnite. For example, you might wait for a passing aircraft to drown out your footsteps so you can enter a household undetected, or you might use a smokescreen to distract a squad of enemy players that are pinning you down from a nearby ridge. Firefights are regularly tense and enjoyable, though the wide selection of guns tend to be clunkier to fire than other modern shooters too (even after you’ve modded them with scopes and extended magazines).

What PUBG has in tactics, it lacks in the “gunfeel” that make games like Call of Duty or Apex Legends so enjoyable to play. Weapons are more tolerable to handle in third-person mode, but frustratingly inaccurate unless you switch to first-person or aim down sights. But since movement is clearly designed around third-person play, not to mention you get the ability to peek around corners without poking your head out, first-person mode feels