The travel company behind Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds
today added a new stag weekend destination, the roasting North African
island of Karakin. The new map is the smallest so far, only 2x2km but
still cramming in 64 players. It’s hazardous too, because its new ‘Black
Zone’ bombings can outright destroy buildings and the new sticky bomb
weapon lets players blast holes in some walls too. With Karakin coming
in, PUBG Corp are making space by rotating Vikendi out for a while. And
lads? Pack sunscreen.
Karakin is a Morocco-y, Algeria-ish, Tunisia-like sort of place with a
few small towns, some farms, a dock, and plenty of palm trees. Though
it is small, it does have plenty of cover between the knobbly landscape
and gert big rocks littering it. Cover is less reliable on Karakin than
other maps, mind.
The most dramatic threat of Karakin is its random Black Zone
bombings, which are similar to ye olde Red Zone bombings but only last a
few seconds and can actually destroy buildings and kill people inside.
Players can also bust through certain walls using the new sticky bombs,
and bullets penetrate some particularly thin walls too. Hunkering down
is a lot less safe here.
Karakin’s launch today comes after a week on the public test servers,
during which the devs gathered some feedback they haven’t had time to
act on. “In a future update we’ll be increasing Karakin loot based on
player feedback received during the testing period,” they say. They plan
to make that change that “soon.”
The snowy map Vikendi is gone from the map rotation for now. It’s still
playable by choice in custom matches but won’t come up randomly. The
devs say rotating maps will help avoid new maps messing with queue
times, and Vikendi is the first going out because it’s a bit iffy. They
explain that “while Vikendi is on vacation we’ll be going in and doing a
bigger revamp of the map than we’ve previously done.” In the meantime,
they’re considering adding its exclusive MP5K and G36C weapons to
another map’s loot pool.
A new season starts today too. Season 6 brings a new pass with 100
new levels to grind through and unlock cosmetic bits. Once again, a free
track offers a few goodies but you’ll get way more if you pay £7.49/€9.99/$9.99 for the Shakedown Survivor Pass.
Inspired by the new map, this season’s new clothing and skins have a
lot of Moroccan/Algerian-ish woven patterns. Some are really quite nice
by the standards of this game’s god-awful fashion.
0 Comments