Watch: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is Steam's next big hit
Battle Royale with cheese.
Playerunknown's Battlegrounds is currently smashing it on Steam. Right now it's the best selling game on the platform and one of the most viewed games on Twitch - not bad for a game that's only been in Early Access for one day.
Battlegrounds is one of the latest games in the popular Battle Royale genre - inspired by the classic film from director Kinji Fukasaku - but this one comes with a bit of a pedigree; its creator Brendan Greene, a.k.a Player Unknown, was the brains behind the original Battle Royale mods for Arma 2 and Arma 3.
Off the back of his work on those, Brendan was then contracted by Daybreak Studios to consult on the Battle Royale portion of H1Z1, which was later released as a standalone game named H1Z1: King of the Kill.
With over 3m copies sold, King of the Kill is currently the biggest player in the Battle Royale genre, but that could be set to change now that Brendan is going it alone (with help from veteran developers Bluehole) on Battlegrounds.
I've played countless hours of King of the Kill so decided to give Battlegrounds a go last night and came away feeling very positive about the whole thing, despite some Early Access roughness around the edges.
Battlegrounds feels like a nice mixture of both H1Z1 and the Battle Royale Arma 3 mod. In terms of gameplay, Battlegrounds is very similar to H1Z1 but with a bit of that Arma 3 realism in thrown in. With none of the constraints brought on by mod tools or publisher whims, Brendan has been able to create the Battle Royale game he's always wanted to make, and it shows in the gameplay.
You can see Battlegrounds in action and hear me go into more detail in the video below, in which I cover such things as the weapons, the terrifying Red Zones and my tragic inability to aim properly.
On the subject of Battle Royale, did any of you watch the Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vinnie Jones movie, The Condemned? It's basically The Hunger Games but so much better because there's a bunch of unnecessary ultra-violence and no one camouflages themselves as a stupid, dumb rock.