Before we go into more detail about the differences between PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale, let’s first explain the concept of both games.
The idea is simple: it’s a multiplayer game where 100 players are dropped onto an island with the aim of surviving. You scavenge to find weapons and other useful items, and go head-to-head with other online players until there’s only a single person left.
To avoid people ‘camping’ throughout the game, a circle is displayed on the map. Anybody outside that circle will slowly lose health until they die. It means that even if you find the perfect spot overlooking the area, chances are you’ll be forced to move on within minutes. It means that confrontation is certain, and keeps the gameplay interesting.
While PUBG was certainly not the first Battle Royale game to hit Steam, it has certainly garnered a lot of interest and was only a matter of time before other companies wanted to cash in on the popularity of Battle Royale-style games. So, what makes PUBG so popular? Well…
First up, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is built using Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, meaning that the graphics and textures are fairly life-like and add a realistic feel to the game. It’s not the only area that has been designed to provide a realistic feel: while scavenging for weapons, you can find a range of clothes that can help you blend into the environment and provide extra protection.
There’s also in-depth customisation options available in terms of weapon attachments. You can customise your weapons with extended clips, better sights and more, as long as you can find them in the abandoned buildings scattered across the island. If gunplay is your thing, then you'll want to take a look the best first-person shooters of 2017.
You can use a bit of common sense here too: if there are military bases, they will have access to more advanced weapons than those found in random buildings and sheds (although you do sometimes come across powerful weapons randomly).
The realism extends to other areas of the game too; there are cars scattered across the map, but these must first be filled up with petrol. Even if you manage to find a canister of petrol and fill the car, you’ve got a real petrol gauge in the car that’ll limit how far that you can go.
Upon winning/being killed in PUBG, you’ll be rewarded with coins. These coins can be used to buy crates that contain new cosmetic items that can be equipped on your custom character, and provides motivation to keep replaying the game – even if you get killed fairly early on in most instances.
Oh, and it boasts the most concurrent users of any game on Steam ever, so you’ll always find full 100-person servers to join.
So, how does that compare to Epic’s Fortnite Battle Royale? While the games are very similar in some respects, the style and approach is different. PUBG takes a realistic approach, while Fornite Battle Royale offers a more casual approach to the survival game.
Take the mode of entry as an example: while you jump from a plane and parachute onto the island in PUBG, users are dropped in via a brightly coloured flying ‘Party Bus’ in Fortnite Battle Royale. The style of the game is very different too, as the island featured on Fortnite is brightly coloured and almost cartoon-y in design.
This style is apparent throughout the game – if PUBG feels serious, Fortnite feels whimsical. It’s a much simpler game too; there are no over-the-top customisation options for your character or weapons, allowing you to focus on finding better weapons (rated common, rare or epic for varying levels of damage) and equipment like shield boosters and bandages.
While at this stage you might be questioning why you’d play Fortnite Battle Royale over PUBG, there’s one feature offered by Fortnite not available in PUBG: crafting and building. That’s right, instead of collecting clothes and weapon attachments, you can use your oversized sledgehammer to destroy trees and other elements to obtain resources to build walls, floors, stairs and more.
This opens up a whole new area in Fortnite, especially when played in a squad of four. It means that you can block the entrance to a house with a brick wall if you’re being chased, or you could fortify your position and make it impossible for enemies to sneak up on you.
If you’re able to build walls, floors and more, you should be able to destroy them too, right? That’s the case in Fortnite Battle Royale, with users able to break down or blow up a range of buildings and structures.
You can throw a grenade in a house and essentially reduce it to rubble, or you can create your own alternative entrance when the enemy is covering the only doorway into the building. It offers a way of tackling situations that simply isn’t available on PUBG, and is an incredibly fun element of the game.
But while Fortnite is a lot of fun to play, PUBG wins in terms of replayability. Why? As mentioned above, at the end of every match in PUBG you’re awarded coins that can be exchanged for crates containing new cosmetic items that can be used in-game. It entices gamers to carry on playing, even if they die fairly early on.
There’s nothing like that in Fortnite at the moment – you’re not presented with any end-game rewards or blueprints for new building structures, and with the lack of a dedicated character to upgrade, there isn’t much motivation to keep going back.