PUBG Mobile F2P is Out and About
It started off almost shyly, with the PUBG Mobile game being soft launched in Canada first. The publisher behind it, the Chinese giant Tencent, didn’t reveal much information, but soon afterward, the game was available for iOS and Android in the USA. The game had more surprises in store than this.
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PUBG Mobile is Free-to-Play
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds that originally came out on PC costs around $29,99 on Steam or Xbox, but PUBG mobile version is free-to-play on iOS and Android. This is interesting, and definitely a smart move on the behalf of the mobile publisher Tencent who has already brought this game out in China and received a lot of positive feedback. It also helps to keep pace with its main competitor, Fortnite, which has provided an F2P battle Royale mode next to its main game which is pay-to-play. The announcements of both Fortnite and PUBG Mobile game being released within days apart is certainly no coincidence; it seems that both PUBG and Epic Games are playing a small version of Battle Royale themselves right now. It will be interesting to see who comes on top!
PUBG Mobile was first released in Canada and then in the USA, scaring the rest of the world that the other regions would be ignored in the near future. Luckily, that was not the case, an official statement was released soon confirming that the game is being procedurally rolled out to other regions as well within the next day or two.
I am the best PUBG player, ever!
Let me cut in right here with a personal story, one I soon found out was shared by many PUBG players as well. Right after installing the game, I joined a random squad and dropped on Erangel. After looting the first initial houses I ran into my first opponent near Mylta Power Central who opened fire on me as I exited a house. Although armed only with a UMP and fighting an opponent with an assault rifle, I managed to dispatch him fairly easily and get his loot. Unfortunately, I have lost two teammates within the next couple of minutes. We landed far away from each other and I never saw how they perished, but after teaming up with the last survivor of our squad, the two of us proceeded to stack kills and managed to reach top ten before expiring at the hands of a full enemy squad. I must admit that my mobile gaming skills are quite limited and I attributed our progress more to the fact that other players were even less skilled than I was rather than the assumption that we were better than them. The following couple of successful matches and chicken dinner kind of confirmed this belief. But there was more to it.
PUBG Mobile Game is full of bots. Oddly enough, Tencent representatives themselves said in a statement that there will initially let players fight against the bots and, as their skill progresses, get them into matches with more and more human opponents. This statement somehow seems to have eluded many players, and soon the reports of chicken dinners and insane kill counts from new players flooded the Net. Soon everyone figured out that the game is infested with bots, and the previously mentioned Tencent statement was quoted again on Twitter, Reddit, and forums. Personally, I find this both a good move on behalf of the developers as well as a good move as far as the gameplay is concerned. Many new players will give up on a new game after a single bad multiplayer match, so this move was actually a smart one… And it also feels right. Surprisingly, the majority of players seem to agree and there is hardly any resentment towards Tencent for something that was perceived as lack of transparency.
The PUBG Mobile gameplay is simply amazing. I wasn’t sure how well PUBG mobile will actually perform, but I was in for a very pleasant surprise. Obviously, the game has been downgraded both in terms of graphics and requirements, but from the very beginning, it is quite clear that this is PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. One could go as far as to claim that the game has been ported one to one, and it has kept all the recognizable trademarks of the original PC version. The best part is that it actually feels like PUBG, that both the atmosphere and the immersion factor are incredible. To be precise, the free-to-play operative term would be “addictive.”
Gameplay
When it comes to the gameplay itself, the developers have remained truthful to PUBG as we know it from PC. Powered by Unreal Engine 4, we can easily make the claim that this is the best-looking shooting game on mobile platforms today. The gameplay is exactly as it is on the PC version. 100 players are being dropped on an island for a Battle Royale match, alone or in teams, forced to find and loot weapons to fight off opponents. Kudos to Tencent for not leaving out anything that we know and love from the original game. You can run, kneel, go prone, jump and vault over the walls and through the windows. You can drive vehicles, explore houses and loot weapon crates. It is very refreshing to see that the game has been replicated almost identically from the PC version, so you easily recognize every geographic feature on the map you have been playing for many months now on PC.
Even though I am not a mobile gamer, I have gotten the hang of how to control characters both in movements and ensuing fights fairly quickly. It’s good to be able to tell that the commands a very intuitive and that you will master it much sooner than you might think, even if you are, pretty much like me, not all too experienced in shooters on mobile devices. Though nothing can actually replace a keyboard and a mouse for control in shooting games, the PUBG Mobile game gets surprisingly near to the ease of control of the characters we are gotten used to.
Unfortunately, you cannot transfer your PC character and its possessions to the mobile version or make any kind of connection between those two accounts, something that Fortnite is well capable of and is boasting about. You will have to start from zero and gather all the cosmetic gear and clothing anew. On the lucky side of thing, it seems that this will be rather easier now.
Final Thoughts
It is refreshing to say that PUBG Mobile Game does not seem to suffer from all those technical problems that the original version of the game has been plagued with for a long time. Even though the graphics have been downgraded significantly and you will see emptier buildings, fewer details in the woods and so forth, the entire port feels just like the original game. However, one problem that sticks out is the pacing; it hasn’t been altered or tweaked, so you need to prepare for longer matches. People who are commuting and playing PUBG on their mobile device will probably find themselves forced to drop out of the match if they can’t stay on a bus or train for longer than 20 minutes… However, it is safe to say that the PUBG Mobile game is among the best shooters for handheld devices out there and will definitely go a long way to re-establish this title as the King of the entire Battle Royale genre.
For more PUBG, check this out: The PUBG Roadmap Plan for 2018
