Playerunknown's Battlegrounds extends final Sanhok test
Three more days
If you fancied visiting the third Playerunknown's Battlegrounds map before it officially launches later this month but missed the public test over the weekend, good news: it's been extended. The final beta for Sanhok, the 4x4km Southeast Asian island, was due to end today at noon but will now run until Thursday the 7th. That's three extra days to creep through paddy fields, master skydiving through the hole into the cave, enjoy the dynamic fog and rain rolling across the map, lob apples around the lobby, and get megamurdered by other guests at Paradise Resort.
The test will now run until noon on Thursday (that's 4am Pacific), developers PUBG Corp announced this morning. If you want in and own Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, look for PUBG: Experimental Server in your Steam library. Yup, you need to download a separate client.
I've not spent ages on Sanhok but it seems promising. The map size, circle pacing, and abundance of loot create a nice pace where we were constantly nudged along but never felt rushed or ended up desperately scavenging - it's a steady hike towards murder. I like the range and scale of fights too, as the trees covering a lot of the island create a canopy blocking the boring old issue of high-ground dominance. I've seen a whole lot of stag & hen weekend parties pushed real tight into small spaces because there's a good amount of cover and objects blocking sight lines. It's good. Good fights.
I'm glad to have weather back in the game too, and enjoy conditions shifting across rounds rather than being static. And I really like dropping through the hole in the cave ceiling then needing to ride Aquarails out.
It's not all gravy. The Sanhok test seems to suffer problems including lag, phantom footsteps, and directional sound being misleading or wrong, and some players report unusually poor performance too. This is a test on the Experimental Server, mind, not even the regular Test Server, so don't expect everything to be working properly.
The developers have just launched a patch reducing the number of vehicles on Sanhok, which they say was "affecting server performance", so hopefully that improves things. I don't know if it's connected, but I did have a parked truck start bucking like a bronco.
But hey, Experimental Server.
Sanhok is expected to officially arrive in Plunkbat proper "near the end of June". This is due to be Sanhok's final test, though evidently PUBG Corp aren't opposed to surprising us with extra test time.
PUBG Corp are currently going after Epic Games in court, claiming that Fortnite Battle Royale copied Plunkbat. Which, yeah, but that's video games for you.