How To Play PUBG Mobile On Your Windows PC
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds might not look it, but it is currently one of the most demanding PC games around. Even with its graphics settings set to low, the battle royale game struggles to churn out a consistently respectable frame rate on the average gaming system. Fortunately, there is a lighter version of the game available to players with older or less powerful rigs, and it’s all thanks to the folks over at Tencent. The Chinese game developer took on the responsibility to bring PUBG to iOS and Android, delivering a mobile variant that exceeded the fan-base expectations.
As does any popular multiplayer title, PUBG Mobile soon had to deal with players trying to gain an unfair advantage via questionable means. Players had begun using Android emulators to play the mobile game on PC. Fortunately, Tencent was quick to realize that mixing keyboard and mouse users with mobile players was bound to ruin the experience for the latter. Instead of locking emulator users out completely, however, the developer set the game to simply match them with each other. Shortly after the change, Tencent released a mobile game emulator of its own – one that comes bundled with PUBG Mobile and requires little to no customization.
Tencent Gaming Buddy is a free download over at syzs.qq.com/en. Once you’ve downloaded the setup, all you need to do is run it and hit Install. You can hit the Customize button below to specify an installation directory of your choosing. The setup will download and install the emulator followed by PUBG Mobile itself. The game will launch automatically when it’s done.
The great thing about Tencent’s offering is that it is tailored specifically for PUBG Mobile. With key bindings automatically appearing on screen wherever applicable and controls set to match the desktop variant’s defaults, you can jump right into your first match without the slightest customization, that is, unless you plan to use a gamepad. There is a separate control customization screen for gamepads that does seem to be lacking a few options, though that may change by the time the emulator sheds its beta tag.
The one thing that you might have to worry about is performance. The game was designed for Android and iOS and, as one would assume, doesn’t seem to have been optimized all that much, if at all, for Windows. To cater for any performance hitches that players might experience as a result, the emulator offers a slew of graphics customization options in addition to the ones on offer by the game itself. You can bring these up by clicking the menu icon – the one with the three horizontal bars – in the top-right corner of the emulator’s window and selecting Settings.
In the tool bar to the right, those of us fond of sharing gameplay will be happy to see a button to take screenshots and another to record video. You might be better off using your favorite desktop screen capture software, though, as the emulator’s video recordings don’t seem to do all that well on frame rate.
The core purpose of the app is to emulate PUBG Mobile, and it does an excellent job of it. If you’ve been itching to enjoy PlayerUnknown’s brand of battle royale but couldn’t get Bluehole’s game to agree with your PC, this is the next best thing.
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