I am a man of many flaws, one being that I am too reactionary for my own good. I tend to be quite over the top if something annoys me; a soapbox is usually under my feet within seconds if something rubs me up the wrong way. If you need any evidence of that, check out my first impressions of PUBG on Xbox One.

In that, I vowed that I wouldn’t play the game again, that in their desperate quest to get a big game out for Christmas that Microsoft and Bluehole had pushed something out that was a total mess. It’s still a mess and probably the least optimised game I’ve played on console this year, but what a hypnotic mess it is.

Everything else I said in that piece still rings true. Rubber-banding is frequent, assets are about as appealing as grout, and the framerate simply isn’t up to par. By all accounts, PUBG on Xbox One should be one of my most hated games of the year and it sort of is, but there’s a lot of stuff to love that evens it out to make it one of the most frustrating but equally invigorating gaming experiences I’ve ever had.

One of my biggest bugbears in the early goings was that all of its many (many) problems while played on an Xbox One S obscured the gem at its center, the hook that has kept millions of players addicted since launch. Shortly after the piece went live, I picked up the controller and played another five hours. Initially, it was morbid curiosity that compelled me to pace around empty houses, picking up fancy coats and scoffing at how poorly rendered all of the interior furnishings were. After a while, however, that just kind of faded into the background.

When PUBG is at its best, there’s nothing else quite like it – I don’t think I’ve ever sweated so much in my life. As a distinctly average player, I have to rely on my wits and hope that luck is on my side, which isn’t to say that I spend all game in the bathtub. I had a more cautious approach to begin with, typically sitting still on a town I thought I had claimed as my own to catch any would-be “invaders” out. As far as that got me (a fair few top ten finishes), it wasn’t rewarding. No, I would have to take the fight to everyone else, twitchy controls be damned.

The control scheme wasn’t something I broached earlier, purely because I couldn’t decide if it was just plain bad or I was too slow to learn. While there are still a couple of moments of panic and confusion when trying to aim down the sights, some praise has to be given to the developers for somehow making a keyboard scheme work on a controller. It isn’t perfect, but it’s about as close as you’ll get to the full PUBG experience without hovering your fingers over WASD.

Moments of glory have been fleeting for me in PUBG, but they’re moments I want to crystallise all the same. There was that time I patrolled the edge of the zone and accidentally killed two players who were doing their best Navy Seals impressions. Or when I caught up to the person who had stolen my truck on a bike and killed him, Sons of Anarchy style. My favourite, however, was when I had t-boned another player’s car in the same truck barely even a minute later before they started firing at me through their window. In a moment of awareness that I will never be able to replicate again, I leapt out of my car with him still thinking I was in it, pulled out my M416 and Houdini’d him to death.

The grand prize of a chicken dinner still calls to me, too. As well as being a reactionary person, I’m also a stubborn arsehole. As it stands, the closest I’ve come is a runner-up spot. After a pretty intense firefight (that would probably make most pros squirm in embarrassment), I was down to the last dregs of health; my Moriarty almost certainly was too. While planning one last attack, the circle creeped up on me and wiped me out, leaving me dumbstruck and distraught. After a couple of minutes of soul-searching, I picked up the controller and went again. PUBG is a drug and I am constantly chasing the dragon.

Does my desire to hatefuck PUBG now mean that it’s a game I can recommend? Absolutely not. It’s still the shambles it was at launch with players on an X having a clear advantage. I lost count of the amount of crashes after the ninth one in just a few hours, as well as the dozens of expletives that have come out of my mouth after the choppiness in framerate and connection takes the perfect target away from me. However, what I will say is that it could be something that sells as many X consoles as Microsoft would have hoped when they signed a lucrative exclusivity deal. Right now, though? You have been warned.



