It’s been nearly a year since PUBG released into Steam Early Access and since I first reviewed this game, so I thought I’d update my review, as it is now heavily outdated.

At the end of my first review for PUBG I said ‘Right now, I'd say the game easily an 8/10, for being a fun, tactical and sometimes even paranoia filled Battle Royale, that is easily the best of it's kind through content alone, and for being one of the most addictive 'Just One more rounds' games I’ve ever played.’ For the most part, I believe this synopsis of PUBG is still accurate, however much has changed since it’s early days in Steam Early Access.
PUBG, as a game, in motion, is still some of the most fun I believe you can have in Multiplayer Gaming in 2018, it’s still slow, clunky and extremely buggy for sure, but is still tense, emotional and as heart racing as ever. BlueHole have released the game out of Early Access, but is still committed to working on the game in 2018 and beyond and have made changes, for better and worse, to some of the game mechanics. Gunplay still has a weight to it, a certain ‘realism’ to how the gun perform, the movement still is clunky as ever, but vaulting adds much needed momentum to the game, and is for the most part pretty seamless, even if getting the right angle to leap through a window is extremely irritating. The game, when it’s working is still a blast to play, but more often than not…it’s not working. Hackers run rampant, and BlueHoles attempts to combat them have been fairly unsuccessful (with the most recent patch having to be reverted due to it causing massive stutter and frame drops), the game is still a buggy mess, with people shooting you at angles that shouldn’t be possible and round corners. The servers seem to be down more than up after patches, it’s a mess at time.
However, a few of my major critiques from my Review from May last year were answered. We got more cosmetics, lots more options for our character to wear, even if BlueHole seems to be going abit overboard with how frequently these are added instead of meaningful content updates. Talking of meaningful content updates let’s talk the ‘new’ map ‘Miramar’.

I think it’s been accepted by much of the community by now Miramar isn’t as strong of a map as Erangel is. For many, it plays too slowly in comparison to Erangel, as PUBG’s original map has many hotspots to drop, such as Pochinki and Military Base, whilst Miramar just doesn’t have these. It feel as if it has less of a ‘lived in’ feel than Erangel and doesn’t feel like it has a much personality to it. Overall, Miramar is a well made map, the gameplay variety compared to Erangel is there, as its much more about positioning on high ground than hiding behind tree’s, but the amount of emptiness on the map, then compared to areas that have massive clutter make it not as enjoyable as PUBG’s original map.
Overall, I still enjoy PUBG, it’s a game that I can still grab a few friends to play and have a blast of a time, but since Fortnite Battle Royale has been thrust into the spotlight, PUBG seems to have gained a rep of being a much worse game than Fortnite, and whilst I believe this is true in some aspects, with Fortnite getting content updates almost weekly whilst PUBG it seems almost bi-monthly, Fortnite has definitely taken the spotlight over PUBG since the beginning of 2018, but I believe these 2 BR games can coexist pretty easily.

If you prefer a more arcadey, accessible BR game with the added bonus of being Free, than Fortnite is right up your alley. But for me, who for this type of game prefers grounded realism and tighter gunplay and what I consider high intensity, I believe PUBG is still the best BR game currently on the market, until a far more polished, optimised but still grounded in reality Battle Royale game releases. For now, PUBG needs to find a way to keep up with Fortnite’s consistent updates, whilst battling it’s infuriating hacker problems and numerous bugs. In its current state (March 2018) I’d say PUBG is a 7/10, but it still offers some of the most memorable moments in gaming you can ever have.