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Blog entry by Ofelia Gossett

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Review -- Survival of the Fittest

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Review -- Survival of the Fittest

PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS is a last-man-standing shooter being developed with community feedback. Starting with nothing, players must fight to locate weapons and supplies in a battle to be the lone survivor. This realistic, high tension game is set on a massive 8x8 km island with a level of detail that showcases Unreal Engine 4's capabilit

Bluehole and PLAYERUNKNOWN (Brendan Greene) have been hard at work on their latest patch for PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS . The Early Access Month 2 Update brings a new vehicle, a new weapon, client performance optimization and much more. The update is scheduled to go live on May 25 5PM KST/1AM PDT/8AM UTC and is expected to take approx. 1 hour to compl

A great addition to GTA 5 was first person mode, turning the more action-oriented segments of the game into a first-person shooter. Personally, I can find third-person or over the shoulder gameplay a little harder to navigate when caught in a firefi

Each match in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has a similar sense of rhythm and cadence -- you jump from the plane, you try to survive the initial bloodbath of players dropping onto the island, you collect as many weapons, supplies, and upgrades as you can, and then try to work your way towards the final circle and eliminate the last remaining players. However, getting to that final point is not only difficult (most of the time), but thanks to the game's randomized elements like where the plane dispatches, weapon drops, and the ever-shrinking circle location, it keeps players on their toes and ensures that no match plays out in the same

Originating from Greene's work on developing mods such as DayZ: Battle Royale (originating from ARMA 2 and its subsequent DayZ ), Battlegrounds ultimately became a sort of mix of the attributes that Greene wanted to take from survival games - the emphasis on player choice and preservation - while refining some of its weaker points. Specifically, Greene's focus on making large maps that would be difficult to pin down exact strategies from game-to-game play a large part of what Battlegrounds has turned out to be, while item randomization ensures that no match plays out exactly the same as it did bef

That fear is also combined with the fact that so many titles in the genre can feel as "Early Access" as an Early Access title can be. Without delving into the numerous technical and performance issues that can crop up with titles in an early development state, there can also be the feeling of mechanics and gameplay ideas that haven't had the proper time to cook yet, and there's no knowing what a title can look like months (or even years) out from what players have available. That's the nature of Early Access games as we know them, and while that's as much an expectation for what you're getting, it can also factor into the hesitation of plunking down money on a game that is, for all intents and purposes, unfinis

The next Monthly Update will also introduce the game's first new paid cosmetic items through a "crate and key system," which Greene took time in the community forum to address. Due to some of the negative reaction towards implementing the system, Greene expressed that the introduction and testing of the new paid cosmetics will "serve as the foundation of a healthy economy after launch," and will aim to "benefit all players - both who are willing to pay and who are not willing to pay for vanity items." However, Greene also addressed that "our messaging wasn't clear" in terms of implementing the new system, and added that the team will "try to communicate better moving forwa

With a name that strikes somewhere between wonderfully-bizarre and generically "video gamey," the indie hit sensation PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (aka PUBG ) has proven to be anything but generic in the past few months, where it went from being a relatively unknown title to one of the year's biggest breakout succes

For those that don't know much about the title and/or have lived under a rock in the past few months, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is an Early Access survival shooter that pits 100 players against each other in typical survival game/ Battle Royale fashion, developed by Korean studio Bluehole and Brandon Greene, the titular "PlayerUnkno

Adjusted squad team colors to make them more consistent between different colorblind options

Added a function where a player can select more detailed criteria for the "Cheating" category in the in-game report

However, with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds , I've felt the compulsive need to check in to the game and attempt a few runs, whether I get oh-so-close to victory or die a hilariously-brief death. Though it doesn't exactly break away from all of the attributes we expect from Early Access titles - IE bugs, bugs, and more bugs - it makes for one of the most effective survival experiences I've played in years by keeping its survival focus lean and simple, but with tons of depth for its rapidly-growing audience. All I know is that Battlegrounds is teasing me with victory and a chicken dinner, and Lotus X I'm hungry for m

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