Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds Preview

My experience with Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds’ closed beta was a technical mess. The game crashed upon the beginning of a match, rubber-banded quite severely at times, and constantly hang for no reason regardless of graphical setting. We’re meant to expect technical issues and lack of polish during a beta, but in this case, the netcode and performance issues were enough to severely hamper my enjoyment of the game.

Battlegrounds’ is a multiplayer free-for-all deathmatch game, in what is colloquially known as “battle royale”. Dropped into a huge island from airplanes and played from a third-person perspective, the matches revolve around killing every player you cross paths with. The gameplay involves a bit of melee and punching, but the majority of it is focused on firearms -- you find gear like weapons and clothing scattered inside buildings and around the environment, pick them up, and proceed to murder everything that moves.

DayZ's influence is undeniable, including the bugs.

The weapons can be modified by attachments also found randomly, and you can aim down the sights as well as shoot from a fixed shoulder angle. The arsenal variety is quite good, with each type of weaponry being represented at least once: grenades, assault rifles, shotguns, World War II bolt-action rifles, even frying pans are in the game. It isn’t comprehensive by any means, but it’s certainly enough to keep the ball rolling.

The game is extremely accessible, with no tutorial or objectives or anything getting in the way of the action. Once you press “Play”, you are connected in seconds, and spawn on a lobby with every other player on the server before flying over the island for deployment in big cargo planes. Once on the ground, random red areas are bombarded by artillery fire every now and then and a blue force field circle is drawn around the island. The circle begins to shrink after a few minutes, and those that stay outside it slowly have their health drained and die. The circle shrinks even further every few minutes, forcing players to converge to one spot and creating confrontation until the last player alive wins.

As if people needed a reason to move around and shoot each other.

I have to be honest: this was not my kind of game. I spent huge swathes of time doing nothing but walking around, as I didn’t always drop near other players and the map has a notable lack of working vehicles lying around. Loot is spread quite generously but lacks depth, meaning I was already filled with the best gear after a couple of minutes of scavenging nearby buildings. I imagine that is a good thing -- it keeps the player’s focus on the action and the balance somewhat even, creating a game that revolves around proper player skills more than gear levels and stats numbers. The end result ends up feeling a bit like Arma, DayZ, and similar shooters, but without the tactical depth and complex systems of the military titles.

The game has an economic system that wasn’t implemented in the beta, where you win coins after matches and use them to buy clothing, tattoos, and weapon skins. No word yet if they will become microtransactions in the future, but Battlegrounds will not be a free to play title. I never won a match, but even surviving into the top ten didn’t net me a huge amount of coins -- without proper implementation, however, it is meaningless to speculate upon those.

There are no bullet drop mechanics implemented, so don't expect anything harder than point and shoot.

In the end, Battlegrounds is an interesting experiment that failed to grab me. The audio design and controls have potential, but the graphics are really subpar -- especially given the unstable performance and freezes that plagued all of my playthroughs. This was a closed beta, so while my time with the game was marred by technical issues, there is a chance it may not reflect the final version upon release. If you’re the kind of person who likes senseless free for alls whose sole objective is to kill other people, then by all means, keep your eyes on Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds.