SteamDon't know how many of you have heard of this, but it is apparently the new hotness. I read something like 2 million sold already? Based on some Arma mods and the movie Battle Royale, the setup is fairly simple: 100 players drop out of an airplane thats flying over a deserted island. You start with just your fists so you must scour the buildings to find weapons, ammo, backpacks, helmets, kevlar, and all the other equipment you will need to last. Because the aim is to be the last one alive on the island.
But wouldn't the game never end? It's sometimes hard enough to find the last remaining other player in a Counter-Strike map, let alone a whole island! Well, see...ok the game tries to be realistic for the most part except this bit. There is a magical blue circle of electricity that surrounds the island. Every few minutes a new circle appears on the map. That will be the new safe zone, and everywhere outside the safe zone will deal damage to you. The first couple circles don't hurt much, you can hang out in them for a good while before they kill you but later on as the safe zone gets smaller the danger zone deals more damage to the point where only a few seconds in it and you die. It a pressure cooker, forcing all these newly armed people into the same space to murder each other.
I should note that it isn't just you vs 100, you can play in different sized groups as well. Duo has you and a friend while Squad has up to 4 people in a group. The nice part there is you don't die instantly, you get knocked down when your health hits 0. You then bleed out slowly but a teammate can come revive you. Or the guy that shot you can keep shooting you and make sure you're dead. You know, whatever. But you can crawl slowly when you're down so sometimes getting around a corner is enough to get revived and continue on.
It is an Early Access game, so there is a level of jankiness to it that I hope gets worked out. I can't rebind my delete key to the thing I want, cars are actually dangerous to the people inside them as the physics can wig out and flip them or you jump out of a moving vehicle only to be run over by it. Once a few more of those things get ironed out it'll be pretty great.
I just had a match that I did not expect to play well, since I was testing my control bindings (yup, delete key still doesn't work...great). The plane flew along the river near the military base. Most people jumped out there so I'm sure it was a bloodbath. Since I was just planning on screwing around I actually rode the plane until it forced me out. This is where all the AFK'ers and disconnects end up so you can get some easy kills, however I noticed a few other active players skydiving so I decided to land at a house some distance from there. Found a shotgun and a backpack and maybe 20-30 seconds later a player rushed into the house at me and tried to punch me to death. Missed with my first shot, but the second shotgun blast took care of things.
The safe zone shrank and I realized in a few minutes I would be outside of it. Luckily I round a buggy and was able to quickly drive inside the circle. Since the plane skirted the southern edge of the map and there aren't THAT many vehicles it was pretty safe for me to find houses to loot, so I did. Picked up a sniper rifle that comes with its own scope (most other rifles you have to find a scope to attach) and an improved shotgun, plus some armor and a helmet. A pretty good setup. The house I was in had an easy to defend upper floor so I just chilled for a while hearing gunfire in the distance and seeing death notices pop up in the kill feed. New circle and sadly I had to leave my house.
By now there was about 40 people left out of the 97 we started with. I did not take the buggy because after a certain point vehicles are a bad idea. They are loud so they signal that you are coming and where from. Sadly for me a lot of the ground I had to cover was fairly open and I was real scared. Once I made it into the circle I decided to stop and crouch in a bush which is surprisingly good camouflage if the enemy isn't looking too closely, which they usually aren't. Another player passed by me maybe 30 feet away on a hill, but just far enough out of range of my shotgun that giving away my position seemed bad. I opted instead to follow up behind him. There was a lot of gunfire on the other side of the hill so...hey, guess that worked out for me.
About 20 people left and there was gunfire all around, but I needed to get into the safe zone. Sometimes you have to just make a run for it. I approached a house thinking I could duck inside but a man hiding in the bushes just outside it had another idea. I didn't manage to shoot him and I escaped behind a wall with very little health. Used most of my bandages to heal up and tried to track that guy down, but I think I wasn't the only one he had to deal with. More gunfire and the number of players kept dropping.
The circle was finishing up on the top of a hill with only a few trees and a rock for cover. I blasted a guy hiding in a bush which worked out nice for me since he had 5 big medpacks so I could heal back up as much as I could. At this point the circle is tiny and its a waiting game, peeking around trees trying to find the other guy. I spot another player hiding behind a rock and take him out, need to heal up again. I hear gunfire and then this was it...it was the last 2 of us, in the tiniest circle. I spot him, but my shots miss! How!? Back off, reload, wait some more. I see him make a break, more shots! I stand up to take better aim....
Oh well. I saved a short replay clip and watching that it appears while laying on my stomach and shooting the shotgun was causing my shots to hit the ground in front of me. I could have had it! But hey, I still feel pretty good with that run.
