PUBG: Blindspot, the first proper PUBG spin-off, is a bit of an oddity. Despite the Steam page for its Next Fest demo saying the game was “inspired by PUBG: Battlegrounds”, and has a dinky little PUBG sticker above its logo to prove it’s part of the wider PUBG universe, it’s pretty clear from the second you choose a character and jump into a 5v5 Demolition match that another game has been a much bigger inspiration here: namely, Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege.
In place of the Battlegrounds’ parachute jumps, there’s now chosen spawn points. Instead of the shrinking playzone, there are tight maps full of entrances and vents and corridors that can be barricaded, barbed wired, trapped or observed in a variety of gadgety ways. And instead of your character having the ability to wear a buttpan on their hip to protect their precious posterior, in Blindspot there’s a character who is basically just Sledge from Siege.
Seriously, do not let the PUBG name fool you. If you’re going into Blindspot expecting a similar experience to Battlegrounds’ battle royale but with a sky high perspective, you’ll be disappointed. However, thats not to say PUBG fans shouldn’t try Blindspot because, after playing a fair few hours of it myself, I think they absolutely should.
One of the most interesting things about Blindspot is how its developer, Arc Team, has managed to bring the speed and accuracy of a first- or third-person shooter to a visual style that’s more suited to slow-paced, squad-focused, turn-based, tactical sims. General movement is handled with keyboard and mouse, and players can spin the camera around freely as they make their way towards their objectives. In order to aim and fire weapons, players will need to hold down the right mouse button which then readies the gun and slows player movement speed.
What’s really interesting here, though, is how players have to use the mouse wheel to switch between aiming for head or body shots, while holding down the left control key makes your character aim for crouched targets. You can still spray and pray with the majority of guns as a newcomer and hit plenty of targets, but once you’ve got these shortcuts lodged into your muscle memory, your accuracy and kill count should increase significantly.
Due to the isometric graphical style, your vision in PUBG: Blindspot revolves around line of sight, which means that, even though you can see this drone’s eye view of the map and can get an idea of the routes available to you, your character will only be able to see exactly what’s in front of them. So, even if an enemy is standing right behind you, you won’t actually see them until they open fire, and by that point it’s basically round over for you. For Siege players, this shift in perspective will certainly take a little while to get used to, but your vision cone is always on screen to remind you where your blindspots are (the clue’s in the name, after all), so it shouldn’t take too long to get accustomed to.
The Blindspot demo gives players access to two game modes: Team Deathmatch and Demolition. Team Deathmatch is great for getting a hang of the shooting and fast-paced movement, while Demolition is a Siege-inspired 5v5 tactical shooter mode in which you and your team alternates between attacking and defending two set rooms on a map. At the start of each round, the defenders have a short window of time to barricade doors and windows, create lines of sight, set traps or place health kits and get themselves ready for the oncoming onslaught. Attackers, on the other hand, spawn outside the buildings and must make their way through tight corridors and small close quarters rooms towards their chosen objective where they’ll need to plant a Decryptor device.
Only one player can carry the decryptor and so they’ll need to be protected at all costs, because if they’re killed, other team mates will have to risk gathering it up again in order to be able to complete the mission. It’s a mode that really rewards planning and teamwork, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it became the popular pick due to the fact that it can still deliver the same heart-in-your-mouth intensity as a round of Siege, all while feeling much more accessible to newcomers and casuals thanks to its isometric visuals.
The demo is a strong showing, but there are a couple of glaring negatives caused mainly by the online nature of the game. Firstly, players on teams who lose the first match have a habit of quitting out in a huff at the moment, which then causes the knock-on effect of unbalanced teams. It’s really annoying to see your team slowly noping over the course of a few rounds, so anyone going in solo and playing with self-serving randoms is going to have way less fun than those going in with a dedicated team of friends. The other aggravation was the spawn camping in Team Deathmatch. This could absolutely be fixed with the inclusion of a safe area for spawning players that the opposing team can’t enter but currently in this demo no such thing exists.
With Rainbow Six Siege still doing the numbers, Rainbow Six Siege X on the horizon and PUBG still being a monolithic game, Blindspot’s liberal lifting of established ideas combined with its recognisable battle royale branding might just make this one blow up like a well-timed sticky bomb to a destructible wall. The isometric visuals are a fun twist on the genre and despite some of the player-based problems I encountered, I can’t find too much fault in the gameplay itself. There might not be that much classic PUBG in there but it has all the tension and suspense that you’d want from a great Rainbow Six style game, which might feel like a nice change to Battlegrounds fans who are a bit burnt out after eight long years of nothing but battle royale.
