PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds - Down to the Last Slice

Remember that one time, last November, when I said I kinda hate FPS? Well, that hasn't changed - it's a game type that takes fast hand-eye coordination and high-precision. With these eyes, I'm doomed to have neither, forever. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is hardly a "shooter". There are aspects that are so much more important in the game that come first like navigation and timing.

The main objective is to remain within a zone that becomes progressively smaller on the rather sizable map. Being outside the zone means you take damage over time and if you die, you're out of the round for good. Each game starts with 100 players and it's a complete free for all, aside from queuing as duo with a friend or as a squad of 3 or 4. Everyone else is hostile, and they won't hesitate to shoot you in the spine with a shotgun while you're not looking. As the chat window slowly fills with more and more confirmed kills, and audible gunfire in the distance, it becomes increasingly unnerving until an inevitable encounter either leaves you dead or bracing for the next.

Right from the get-go, you have to jump out of a plane and parachute to somewhere on the island. Your plane is one of many entering the map and you have to weigh the risks and potential rewards of going to a high building-dense area where there are likely going to be players to deal with. Where you land is just one crucial decision. Everyone starts with nothing - anything worn by your character in the main menu after creation is purely cosmetic. Players must scavenge the buildings for armor and weapons to protect themselves or go out hunting. I usually take a safer route and managed 21st place my first game ever.

You'll be lucky to get many kills at all. The top player in the world's record is 22 kills in one match. Considering you only get one life, that KD spread is impressive no matter who you are. which is insane for this game. Squad play was really fun because you use vectors to maintain a high coordination of enemy fire, location, movement, etc. And yes, that's my dumb ass with a crossbow pretending to be Daryl from Walking Dead. We had this one house pinned down and I was shooting at someone behind a window and thought I was hitting them. It never looked like I drew blood - maybe the hits were clean, or maybe I'm just horrible. I'm sure my squad will read this and seek a replacement immediately. One of them eventually lit themselves up with a molotov and we were overrun by yet another squad who no doubt heard our fire from behind. But even in defeat, there's a story to be told and it's fun.

My favorite moments were on motorcycles. The first was a duo queue where my partner died to a camper sitting in a bathtub and out of the two of us who know how to shoot, it isn't me. It was early enough that we were split up and I couldn't find the culprit and eventually had to run and was lucky to find the bike. I spent as long as I could riding around, keeping safe and keeping fast. Avoiding the main roads and using the driving skills I've accumulated in past games to propel me to 5th place. I ended up killing someone perched in a tower looking away only to take fire at my doorway when the blue zone demanded I take action.

The second was much more hectic and involved two bastards following us in their busted up pinto. I'm the genius who thought it'd be better to fight and ride around trying to shoot at them instead of fleeing immediately and I ended up crashing us only to be hastily gunned down. I was too occupied looking at their car and possibly taking screenshots.

The game has so much variance and my vehicle craving gets to go nuts; I just love driving. The controls are the same for most games; it takes a minute to adjust to the specifics, then it feels great, especially for how early in development the game is. I wanted to use a boat to go all the way to the west coast before the death zone caught up to us but someone wanted to check out a beach for possible enemies and we ran out of time and had to bail on the boat and book it up a hill to get to the safe zone.

All in all, every moment counts and the game is fantastic. I just took 9th in a high-anxiety solo game and my hands are shaking. I don't know who gunned me down, nor could I see them, but the game is intense as shit. You'll never have the same experience twice. You can die super early to bad luck or find yourself literally staring at the game's border wondering what the hell to do as you face certain death or total victory.