Since it was released on Steam‘s Early Access platform in March last year, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has been the main game for my pals and I. We venture outside the Battle Royale title from time to time, sure, but most of our hours playing together have been in PUBG.
Over that time, we watched the game move from strength to strength, improving its performance and breaking records along the way. Any emerging competitor we labeled as a poorly executed ripoff or merely negligible. Nothing could beat the mighty PUBG.
But the tide has turned, my friends. Many players have become frustrated with aspects of PUBG, whether it’s the lack of polish, the major cheating problem, or its latest map, Miramar, and they’re looking for an alternative.
I tried to ignore it at first, but the elephant in the room has grown too large to continue doing so. Its name is Fortnite, and folks are going nuts for it.
Fortnite’s own Battle Royale mode seemed like a blatant PUBG ripoff, but watching it grow rapidly eventually piqued my curiosity. I had to give it a go.
One big advantage Fortnite has over PUBG is that it’s free to play, so it was a piece of piss to load up once I downloaded the Epic Games launcher. Most of my pals are still PUBG loyalists, so I had no choice but to jump into solo matches.
Both games share the same premise – 100 players jump into a map where the play area continues to shrink. The last player or team standing wins. The first thing I noticed is the size of the map compared to PUBG. It’s much smaller, meaning you can fly pretty much anywhere very easily despite the trajectory of the plane (or floating bus in this case).
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, it just makes traversing the map much faster. In situations where I’d normally rush to get inside the play area of a PUBG match, I could spend more time looting before legging it in.
I died pretty early on in the first few games, but once I got a handle on the controls and mechanics, I was usually making the top 10, but still haven’t managed to get a win under my belt just yet.
Fortnite also runs way smoother than PUBG, which is honestly like a real breath of fresh air. Sometimes you just can’t beat the way a polished game feels, you know. At least comparatively.
After a good few hours, I’ve realised that there are more differences between the two titles than I originally assumed, and while each game follows the same idea, I approach them both differently. In PUBG, I like to play the long game – aim for a quiet area where I can loot and gather resources, keeping a low profile until the end.
When playing Fortnite, I felt compelled to chase the action straight up. The sound of firefights that I’d usually avoid in PUBG became a beacon. I wanted a piece of that sweet action.
The difference in approach comes down to a few things. Firstly, the games in Fortnite feel much shorter than PUBG. I’m not entirely sure whether this is because the actual matchmaking process is quicker, or that the smaller map means things happened faster, but it made firing up another match feel easier. Let’s call it a combination of both factors.
Inventory is also simplified – you can only hold 5 items at a time, plus your pick axe, which takes some of the pressure away from inventory management. I was way more inclined to stick with what I found in one area rather than being tempted to find more in another.
The same goes with weapon customisation – there is none in Fortnite – and that feels kind of refreshing in a way. It’s nice to just charge into the fray shortly after landing rather than spending 10 minutes looking for a fucking sight / scope in PUBG.
This simplification made the whole thing feel faster and easier, while dying became slightly less frustrating.
But the biggest difference between the two is building, which I’m still getting used to. When running towards an unclimbable obstacle in Fortnite, my instinct is to go around it, and when I’m copping bullets in an open field, I scramble for cover. It’s taken me a few deaths to realise that I can build shit to help in both situations.
Hell, some folks even build ramps just to get the upper hand on an enemy, which can be insane to watch, but hard to execute without experience. It adds a completely new dimension to Battle Royale – literally.
I honestly didn’t expect to enjoy Fortnite as much as I did. Once I realised that it wasn’t trying to be PUBG, I allowed its take on the Battle Royale genre to flourish on its own merits.
Going into the game, I expected to come out favouring one title over the other, but I don’t think making that comparison is exactly fair. It’s like trying to compare Counter-Strike and Overwatch – both are great team-based first-person shooters, but each title takes its own vastly different approach.
Whether you favour one or the other will come down to the type of gamer you are, but enjoying both games is incredibly easy to do if you give them a chance.
