PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds – Beyond The Popular Battle Royale DayZ Mod

Popular Battle Royale Mod Becomes Standalone Game

Rarely do we see the words Battle Royale, Survival and Shooter together when it comes to video games. Well, this is the case for PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds (PUBG) and the reason why it caught our attention. The game is a massively multiplayer third-person shooter allowing up to 100 players in each battle royale game-mode. The lead designer for the game is Brendan Greene who developed ARMA series mod DayZ: Battle Royale the popular mod for DayZ. He also acted as a consultant for H1Z1: King of the Kill. This would be the standalone version of the mod and the best of both worlds now being published by Bluehole Inc. If you were trying to put the pieces together there you have it. PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds was just released for early access on PC in March 2017 and expected to last six months. Take a look at the trailer released on Steam below.

Game Modes, Items, And GamePlay

As I mentioned earlier the game supports up to 100 players in each battle royale game mode. But you can also play in small teams instead of solo. In either case, the last person or small team to remain standing wins the match. At the beginning of each match, every player starts on an island without any items. This is where the survival instincts and searching come into play. You need to find weapons, attachments, vehicles and other equipment. All the items are randomly distributed throughout the battleground. There are currently 17 weapons, 35 attachments, and 4 vehicle types. The game itself has incredible vehicle mechanics, motion captured character animations and customization system.

The player tactic also comes into play. You can choose to either remain low to avoid conflict or take a more aggressive approach and loot other players once you hunt them down. There is also a “player safe” area that shrinks every 5 minutes. This is compared to the “out of map” area in Battlefield. The point is to bring players closer and closer together to facilitate encounters. At the end of each match, the winner will be awarded in-game currency. This is based on how long they survived and killed other players. The currency can be used to purchase cosmetic items. There is also in-game ranking and leaderboards based on a point system.

Already Successful Launch

The early access for PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds aims to release content, balance updates, fix bugs and improve performance on servers. They have a “community driven development” where gamer feedback and suggestions will be highly taken into consideration when making decisions. They also support modding which provides gamers the ability to create theirs on game modes and mods. The game released on Steam has already proven to be a success with $11 million during the first 3 days of its early access release and selling over 1 million copies by the second week of April 2017. You can currently purchase the early access game for $29.99 using Steam on PC. It is also expected for the game to be released for consoles after the PC release.