By Jarrod Castillo Staff Writer
In the ever-changing landscape of mobile gaming, Epic Games appeared to have taken the market by storm by releasing “Fortnite Battle Royale,” much to the surprise of gamers everywhere.
Not to be outpaced in the arms race for the battle royale genre, Tencent Games, with the permission of the PUBG Corporation, soon released “PlayerUnknown’s BattleGround Mobile” to compete with “Fortnite.”
“Fortnite” was initially meant to be a full retail game in which groups of up to four players would gather resources and weapons to defend themselves from a storm cloud that caused 98 percent of the world’s population to be turned into zombies. Epic Games only added a battle royale component once it saw the popularity of the battle royale genre, thanks in part to “PUBG.”
With that, Epic decided to focus almost entirely on the battle royale portion of the game and soon “Fortnite” for mobile was released. Featuring everything that was available in the PC and console versions of the game, Epic was able to turn their cartoonish free-for-all game into a solid mobile port.
Meanwhile, “PUBG Mobile” is very similar to an earlier NetEase Games’ battle royale release, “Rules of Survival.” For a good part of 2017 and early 2018, “Rules of Survival” was considered to be the “PUBG” of mobile, as the gameplay and features made it almost an identical copy of “PUBG,” save for the different map and weapons.
Seeing the success of “Rules of Survival,” the PUBG Corporation decided to hand over the license to Tencent to create a mobile game that, dare I say, runs smoother than the Xbox One version. On the Xbox version, there are framerate issues, lag and a fair amount of pop-ups on screen, which makes the first minute to two of the game difficult to play.
All of the aforementioned problems that plague the Xbox version are not present in the mobile version, which makes it a great alternative to the PC version.
That being said, having played both games for a good number of hours, I would have to say that “PUBG Mobile” is the better choice. Gamers who are looking for a better experience without trying to learn any new components will enjoy “PUBG Mobile” more than “Fortnite.”
This is because “Fortnite” has a steep learning curve for newer players. Not only do players have to learn how to build forts within a moment’s notice to avoid gunfire, this move is especially difficult on mobile. “PUBG Mobile” does away with the complexities to provide a more barebones, yet engaging experience.
Instead of forcing players to adopt a new style of play, “PUBG Mobile” caters to what players already know and appeals to that. Rather than building complex walls and fences to stay alive in “Fornite,” “PUBG” makes it clear what to do: survive by any means necessary. This is why I would prefer it to “Fortnite.”
Besides, sometimes, it’s better to be simple than complex and it makes it easier on everyone involved.
