The PUBG Corporation is testing its 1.0 update for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds this week, and it’s weird. I’ve spent so many hours with this incredible, janky battle royale shooter that I’ve grown accustomed to its mechanical idiosyncrasies. But now that I can easily and effectively hop over most obstacles in my characters way, the game just feels wrong.
This is my way of saying that the vaulting mechanics in PUBG work really well. Up until this point, players didn’t really have any options to get through open windows or to climb over small fences. Instead, you’d have to struggle with PUBG’s physics to jump over a small stone wall — or you’d have to run around it. Now, however, you can simply tap the spacebar while standing in front of a rock, and your character will clamber right up on top of it.
I love PUBG, but it’s weird to see a complicated animation system within the confines of what is otherwise, technologically speaking, a hot mess. At the same time, it’s awesome to have the world of PUBG suddenly spring open with new possibilities. Every window is now an escape route, but you can already think of ways that you can use this tactically. For example, if you are trying evade an enemy, you could punch out a window to make the glass shatter. This enables you to then climb through, but the noise will also draw the attention of your opponent. Instead of vaulting through the broken glass, you could just run to the stairs and hope that the person hunting you down chases after the loud crashes.
That’s just one example, and I think that’s my biggest takeaway from getting hands-on with vaulting: it’s going to take a lot of time to understand how to use this. I mean, at this point, who knows the limitations of the climbing. But even once you have a grip on that, will you remember to use it to get the drop on other players? That’s exciting, and I can’t wait for this patch to activate on the live servers.
