With 1.3 billion downloads and grossing over 9 billion dollars, PUBG Mobile is one of the oldest mobile FPS (first-person shooter) games to reach its level of popularity. It is often seen as a pioneer for battle royale games on the mobile platform. But is it still relevant almost 7 years later?
PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) Mobile is a battle royale mobile FPS game developed by PUBG Studios and Lightspeed & Quantum Studio and was released on March 18, 2018 under multiple publishers in different regions, such as Kraftin, Tencent, and VNG Games.
Even after all these years, PUBG Mobile is still thriving, often being considered the best mobile battle royale game ever. It is definitely worthy of your storage space.
Being capable of running on almost any mobile device while having high-end graphics, large immersive maps with a hundred players battling, and realistic mechanics, PUBG Mobile offers the best bang for the buck. CODM (Call of Duty Mobile) is the current biggest competitor, but it takes a lot more storage and computing power. In my personal experience, I’ve had PUBG run on a Chromebook and a Redmi Note 7 with a slight sacrifice in graphics quality and framerate, taking around 2GB of storage; CODM was a little rough running on an iPhone 10 and took nearly 50GB while the PC version PUBG only needs about 30GB.
Oftentimes having a solid community is what will make or break a game; luckily, PUBG Mobile has just that. There are tens of millions of active players, making it easy to fill up the hundred-player lobbies, an active community such as r/PUBGMobile on Reddit, regular updates, events, tournaments, and even Esports so you’ll never get bored regardless of your playstyle or skill level.
Of course, nothing is perfect, and PUBG Mobile is no exception. A significant issue lies with the games’ hackers and cheaters, remaining an issue even with new anti-cheating measures being implemented. Other downsides that are more personal preference include the gyroscopic aiming is not as adjustable, controller support is iffy and would also pose as an unfair advantage because of the improved ergonomics, and sometimes having such advanced mechanics is too much for the casual player. There are just so many items to keep track of, buttons for different actions, and bullet drop can sometimes be a pain if you’re not used to it.
All things considered, PUBG Mobile is indubitably one of the best mobile games out there and the popularity reflects that. It offers many features you would expect from a high-quality FPS game such as advanced mechanics, high-quality graphics, and high customizability; But it also offers many unique attributes such as being easy to run, lots and lots of vehicles, and a unique armor system.
