While PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is not the first Battle Royale video game on the market, it’s initial release for personal computers within the 1st quarter of 2017 undoubtedly started a resurrection of this style of game. Since then, a plethora of developers have introduced several versions of this type of survival gameplay. For instance, Treyarch and Activision released Blackout for the Call of Duty franchise, Red Dead Online released its own version known as ‘Make It Count, and Epic Games transformed Fortnite’s Battle Royale into a huge success story as a result of it being free to play. Now, PUBG will be hitting PS4 shelves, 2years after its initial release to the world, it makes one question whether the game will still be a big deal for PS4 Battle Royale fans or did the leap from PC to PS4 occur way too late?
PUBG’s Gameplay
PUBG provides the opportunity to scrap and explore through three enormous maps of Sanhok, Erangel, and Miramar, while Vikendi just entered the server. Players are tasked with searching for weapons, armour, and consumables to survive a match which has been populated by 99 other players, while a storm circle encroaches slowly on the map which forces you to battle it out with entertaining firefights. This one can achieve on their own, or in a group of up to 4 players at a time. However, the main objective doesn’t change as it is to be the last survivor when the match ends.
With the landscape of the video game world currently being over populated with a vast selection of Battle Royale games, PUBG can be regarded as a more concentrated and specialized outlook to this genre, as it mainly lies within the domain of tactical-shooter games. The version for PS4 seems to reflect this in more than one way as it managed to retain all the primary elements that are seen in the game’s mobile, Xbox One, and PC iterations. However, its overall presentation and experience of PUBG on the Ps4 can frequently be a miss or a hit.
The main gameplay provides a decent selection of enjoyability if you are someone that merely wants to enjoy a battle against other players. However, the overall control layout of the DualShock 4 is odd to say the least, making it extremely hard to adjust to the game and become a master.
Movement and Manoeuvres
Apart from the horrible controls, one asset on PS4 while playing PUBG is the realistic and dependable shooting itself. It feels incredibly solid, regardless of what weapons you choose to use. However, evasive manoeuvres and basic movement, especially while driving a vehicle, can be quite ineffective and unreliable at times. Obviously, this will hamper with the pleasure of using the shooting mechanics when a firefight decides to break out. Another downside to the PS4 version is the menus that is unintuitive along with poorly designed layouts, prompting frustration and confusion during play. With that in mind, the PUBG version for PS4 doesn’t offer much for players to keep them around over the long-term.