PUBG (PlayStation 4) Review

PUBG: One of the most talked about games of the last five years, and one of the games I had never gone near until the opportunity arose to write a review for it.

PUBG, or known by its more formal name as Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, was only official released in December 2017 and on other platforms since then and has certainly taken the world by storm, helping pave the way alongside competition Fornite for the Battle Royale hype in the online multiplayer world.

PUBG’s PS4 version came out recently in December 2018 so for the sake of this review and it being the platform I played on, then PC will not have a focus here. Apart from better performance issues or glitch comparisons across platforms, the overall concept of PUBG is present across all platforms so I don’t think it matters all too much.

Instantly, I was thrown into the world of PUBG and luckily, I’m familiar with the concept of battle royales or I highly doubt I would have had any clue what was happening.

Like most new online multiplayer games, I will admit that I spent a chunk of time learning what buttons to click and how to equip things where. A few times I gave up in frustration and had to leave the game of my own accord to figure out how to equip my weapon or open my inventory. This wasn’t necessarily the noob gamer that can come out in even the most seasoned gamers but rather something that I felt should have been better dealt with on behalf of the developers to provide a much smoother transition into the game.

The graphics were amateur to say the least in comparison to what beauties have been produced in the past 5 years. I felt like I was revisiting a game from my childhood and that it would only have been acceptable because it reflected the time. Awareness around developer budgets and money should be mentioned but when you’re as big of a game as PUBG, the players deserve to be given graphics that feel smooth, fresh, bright and gritty to name a few characteristics found in current games.

Is it better than Fornite? No. Fornite stands at the top of the pedestal in my opinion. Performance issues didn’t ruin my experience on the PS4 as I surprisingly had little to none but the lack of information and overall quality of a game that people pay money for continue to make PUBG a game falling down the hill it once stood atop of.

It’s a shame really. How a game that can have such high popularity level can reward its players with such low-quality content.

The concept of battle royale is timeless really and will always be a token for the online gaming community. Because of this, it makes an easy game concept for developers wanting to make some cash. ‘Let’s make an online game. What should players do? Let’s give them a battle royale.’ Battle royales have taken the world by storm and it makes sense that that is where the most action is. Games like PUBG and Fortnite are being nominated or even winning huge gaming awards like game of the year when they’re up against revolutionary games such as God of War or Detroit Become Human that constantly push themselves to challenge video game storytelling and experience. What are games like PUBG challenging? Nothing, but there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that.

At the core of video games is the entertainment factor. Since the beginning of video games, people used them for entertainment or an escape from reality. Perhaps PUBG gained popularity for merely being just that, entertainment. It did feel like that when playing it on the PS4. Exploring the settings, finding loot, preparing for battle with my team mates, the adrenaline is there, and the stakes are high. If one game fails, you just move onto the next and despite the concept being the same, no match is ever the same and perhaps that is one of the reasons players will always come back to the old battle royale game.

I’m glad I took the opportunity to play around in the world of PUBG. I admire the success and its place in the video game industry but only wish more effort was put into creating a game worthy of its players.

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