A shooter that’s as invested in creating a smart, nuanced survival experience as it is fun, action-packed combat.

Even though PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is still in Early Access, it’s already a groundbreaking online shooter. Each game starts the same way, but its remarkable ability to feel like a fresh new adventure every round has kept me coming back for hours on end. It manages to approach the Battle Royale-style death match made popular by games like DayZ with relative simplicity, without sacrificing the essence of the hardcore survival sim, creating a tight, focused, and no-frills experience that places it leagues above the competition.

Battlegrounds wastes no time putting you right in the middle of the action, as up to 100 players join a server and pick their moment to jump out of a plane and parachute onto a large 8x8 km island. Even this first act is a critical decision and must be part of your strategy: jumping early lets you hit the ground first, giving you a jump on the competition, but may also place you farther from the center of the arena where the fighting must inevitably funnel towards. Jumping late might give you some distance from other players, giving you some early breathing room before entering the fray. Jumping right into the center, especially in large cities where most players drop, will place you right in the middle of the action.

The tension mounts during the descent as you get a good look at the swarm of players in your vicinity, but things really pick up the moment you hit the ground, as everybody scrambles for weapons and gear and the killing begins right from the get-go. Backpacks for holding more items, a handful of protective gear like helmets and police vests, healing items, melee weapons, and a good mix of firearms are in good supply.

Item distribution is randomized, but you can’t count on finding a good gun early keeping you safe. It isn’t out of the ordinary for someone with only a pistol to take down someone with a fully loaded SCAR-L assault rifle, since good gear is only half the battle – the other half is wit. As players outsmart each other in deadly games of cat and mouse, those still standing are forced into ever-closer proximity within the confines of a deadly, ever-shrinking force-field until just one is left alive. Victory is an exhilarating reward, matched only by the suspense that emerges from the battle to achieve it. But even if you die early, jumping into a new game is always quick and easy. (Kill cams are wisely omitted to avoid cheating, but you do have the option of entering spectate mode for surviving teammates.)

The deadly, moving force-field that contains the arena and occasional airstrikes marked with red on the minimap add a consistent sense of purpose, and with it, an exciting set of options. You might want to prioritize reaching the center to avoid each incremental reduction in size of the survivable area, move slowly along the borders to pick off stragglers as they rush into the open to avoid the oncoming doom, or even hide in a building until you absolutely have to move, letting everyone else kill each other so you don’t have to. An aggressive approach is just as viable as a cautious defense, and the practicality of both playstyles is refreshingly liberating, bringing new sets of challenges that are just as fun to plan around and tackle as the next.

The incentives to stay on the move no matter your chosen pace forces ever more dangerous encounters with increasingly skilled (or lucky) survivors, condensing the action and ending a match after around 20 minutes, before it can get bogged down by campers or other distractions. Action isn’t hard to find in Battlegrounds if you’re looking for it, and impossible to avoid for long when you’re not, but it manages to put enough space between encounters to keep those quiet, tense moments we know and love from games like DayZ intact.

END OF PART 1.