Even better, you can turn on the speech to text and enjoy the delightful gibberish it creates for you.
But yeah, I have been enjoying APEX - the key difference to me is that I don’t like playing PUBG as much without a squad, but I can happily play APEX with randos. Even if they’re complete and utter idiots, no stress - plus, if you’re playing with a squad, there’s a good chance they can pull you back into the game if you get rolled, which is nice, and even randos tend to do it. Even if only to get another layer of ablative meat between them and the hurty stuff.
After taking loads of time away from playing video games regularly to make a video game, I’ve played a few times this month.
The new gliders are really fun. Two-person aerial combat is super awesome. I mean, it’s terrible. Awful. It’s the jankiest flying machine ever, and almost impossible to shoot from. But that’s a huge benefit. If the gliders flew more easily, nobody would do anything else. How crazily difficult it is makes it fun.
I tried the gliders for the first time today. I’ve got pretty good at flying, but I’ve never found anyone who can take off to give me an opportunity to shoot from the back seat. But I’ve had lots of glider-to-glider action.
Also a chicken dinner! First one in ages. Mainly through not playing, losing practice, and everyone still playing being, on average, more hardcore. I think the influx of people like me, mostly wanting to play with the new gliders, means it was a bit easier to win.
For years my favourite map was Miramar. I love the building-to-building fights in the early game. I love the open-ground endings, where people aren’t staying in buildings, going prone in the grass, hiding behind trees.
Also, my least favourite map was Miramar. It’s way too big. If you do well and get to the final circles, that means you probably spent 20 minutes driving around aimlessly, looking for or trying to avoid action. Or you spent 20 minutes running in the blue, trying to loot every small building you pass, trying to find healing to make it across a map that was just waaaaay to big.
The new map is all that I like about Miramar, with none of what I hate. Short games, all action, fun terrain.
With a little bit more loot, this is going to be an amazing update.
PUBG season 8 is coming to a close, and in season 9 they are removing map selection in the EU, so I can’t just play only my favourite map, Karakin. Instead I’ll have to queue for random maps. Which is a pity, because I really like the 15-18 minute match length of Karakin compared to the 30-35 minute matches on the bigger maps.
Every time I win I take a photo of my screen, and in season 8 I got 21 solo wins. I thought this was an improvement over last season, so I checked my stats, and it turns out… 21 wins in season 7 too. No improvement.
I predict my wins will go way down over the next three or four months as I either play less overall, or just play fewer matches due to them taking longer.
I solve that by only playing one game at a time. This year has mostly been PUBG with a big lump of Breath of the Wild in the middle. And some Fall Guys.
Due to the new PUBG map only having a Four Player Squads option, and due to how much I can’t be bothered playing with random squad members, I’ve been trying the hardest possible variation:
Solo Squads!
That means I’m playing as a solo, but up against 19 other teams of four players each. In fact, because there is only squads, quite a few teams have two or three players, not four. But no matter, winning as a solo player is the hardest option.
Last week I got my first solo squad win, but I was unsatisfied because I only got one kill, and that was the last kill of the game. Before then I had got some knocks, but as they were long range, I didn’t manage to finish the kills before they crawled to safety and were revived by their team mates.
For a while I would either get lots of kills, but die by being too aggressive, or have a boring game and die by not paying attention properly.
But tonight I tied it all together, had a super fun game, played the final circles to perfection, and got a proper solo squad win with a decent kill count.
It was my first game of the evening, but also my last, because there’s no chance I’ll be able to top that in the same session.
I’m not sure how it keeps doing it, but PUBG continually gives me access to these peak gaming experiences. It’s quite remarkable.
So I tried out PUBG now that it’s free and it was an alright experience, it felt very empty thou and systems within in it were so fiddley.
That said also been playing Fortnite and that’s super fun. easy to learn, difficult to master, the map is full of strange and funny things and the game does a good job of letting you know where the action is. .
Give me a shout next time you’re thinking of playing about, see if we can’t round up a squad. I punched through the training matches(that are new since I last played), but I’ve not jumped into many live matches for a long time now, could be good to stretch the old Pubg muscles.
PUBG is still (along with BOTW) my main long-term game, and I play a few times a week, so if anyone wants a tour of the islands, or a non-empty match, send me a message on Steam.
