Counter-Strike is undoubtedly one of the most popular games on the planet, with millions of fans (most of them from engineering colleges in India). It is so damn famous that it is more a past time than a video game. But for some time, interest has been waning in this game, because the format is so boring, and has been unchanged ever since the original game was launched.
It ain’t what it used to be
But this falling interest has found its place in another heavily addictive online game called Player Unknown Battlegrounds, colloquially known as PUBG (pronounced pub-gee).
It is a first-person shooter game, but with a twist. 100 players parachute into the game-field, the last one survives. To quote Polygon’s Chris Plante, it is
“An unoriginal idea executed in an original fashion: That’s the merit of Battlegrounds.”
A bit of a walkthrough
So, once you parachute in, you raid houses in an Eastern European-ish town, gather supplies and then get ready for battle. There are no teams, no red and blues, everyone looks out for themselves. If you come across another player, you have to kill him/her or let others fight amongst themselves and hide out as long as you can, no other way out.
But the real twist is that as the game progresses, the game-field gets smaller, you have to stay within the shrinking radius or leave the game. And naturally, as the field gets smaller, you cannot avoid your competition. Check out this gameplay footage.
Everything in PUBG has a purpose and can be used to levy strategic advantage over others. For example, all doors are closed when the match begins, so an open door signals that someone has been there. Military bases have lots of weapons, so it is almost guaranteed that people will go there in droves to get weapons, thus a higher chance of a fight.
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What there is to love
This game is insanely strategic, a welcome break from the bore that became of Call Of Duty and Counter-Strike. I believe Plante from Polygon said it best
“In Call of Duty, even the losers get experience points, progressing them through some arcane skill tree. The same isn’t true in Battlegrounds, where players take great pleasure, consciously or not, from spoiling the fun of their peers. To survive a round is to savor the fact that 99 other people did not.”
This game has risen so insanely that it now boasts over 30 million players. Just check out these images from steamcharts.com, a website which monitors game traffic. It is a comparison between CS: GO, a massively popular online game, which has its own esports tournaments and our dear PUBG.
These figures are unbelievable. And so is the game. In the brief time that I have played it, I have come to enjoy it immensely, the freshness and strategic nature is quite a hoot. I just wish that the friend who had loaned me his Steam ID for this review does it again soon so that I can enjoy it more.
Image Credits: Google Images
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