If you are an organic lifeform, then you’ve probably heard of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or PUBG. For those of you who don’t know, in PUBG 100 people parachute onto a 8km by 8km island with randomly dispersed weapons, armor, and vehicles. The last person standing is the winner. The game also has duo and squad modes available as well. The game has sold over 35 million copies across PC and Xbox, and it’s one of the most-watched games on Twitch. And though it has been losing some players to Epic Games’ cultural phenomenon Fortnite: Battle Royale, which also has the “battle royale” premise, it looks like its player count is about to surge again thanks to PUBG coming for free to iOS and Android. But the mobile port isn’t scaling down the game’s content in any way. It’s a 1:1 recreation for the game we know from PC and console, with only scaled down graphics. But can a game with such a huge map, large number of weapons, and vehicles translate well to mobile?

  Well, first let us address the elephant in the room: graphics. The graphics are most certainly scaled down from the other platforms PUBG is available on, and you can see the textures load bit by bit during the descent towards the island, but once you are on the ground the textures and graphics do a surprisingly good job staying put. I have played several matches of PUBG Mobile, and I’ve never seen a graphics glitch when I’m on the ground. That is quite impressive for such a huge game making the leap from PC to mobile platforms, and such a graphics-intensive game at that.

  Another comparison that must inevitably be made when talking about PUBG Mobile is the control scheme. First-person shooters on mobile have this inherent problem where they have limited field of vision due to small screen size, and that problem is compounded by the fact that a person’s hands can actually block out some of what is happening on screen. However, this doesn’t feel like too much of a problem on PUBG Mobile, and I feel the reason for this is the third person viewpoint, which gives players a wider field of vision, and the buttons for various actions being closer together than some other mobile shooters. Although, the tighter control scheme can be a bit of a hindrance during gameplay: more than once I have found myself giving away my position because I accidentally pressed the fire button while trying to move the in-game camera.

  Putting aside all that, the gameplay of PUBG is still as solid, tense, and fun as ever. There really is nothing like running across an open field, and knowing that there could be any number of crosshairs trained on you at any given moment, and the mobile version truly is a faithful port of the game that manages to hold up on its own, even with smaller sized phones, and I have found myself enjoying the game quite a lot since I downloaded it. Definitely worth trying out if you are looking for a tense, thrilling multiplayer experience.