The battle royale genre is crowded, and standing out requires taking massive risks. Krafton’s latest experiment, PUBG DED.NET, has officially entered its closed beta phase on current generation consoles. After spending several hours diving into the matches, testing the mechanics, and pushing the progression system to its limits, it is clear that this is a massive departure from the gritty, slow paced tactical shooter fans are used to.
Instead of a standard drop and fight format, DED.NET attempts to blend traditional battle royale mechanics with out of match roguelite progression. The result is a game that is occasionally fun, frequently frustrating, and tonally confusing.
Currently limited to First Person Perspective (FPP) Trios, the core loop of DED.NET happens both inside and outside the match. Before dropping into the map, you select a character and equip them with specific abilities known as "ROMs" and "mods."
Once you are in the match, things operate fairly normally: you loot weapons, gather attachments, and fight other squads. However, the stakes are different. Each character you create has a persistent health pool that carries over between games. If you die in a match, your character loses a chunk of this permanent health. If that health pool hits zero, your character suffers permadeath resetting all the upgrades, abilities, and progression you earned for that specific build back to zero.
It is a clever system that encourages players to have a roster of active characters. You might have a sniper specialist, a close quarters breacher, and a support medic all ready to go, swapping between them between matches to protect their permanent health pools.
The map itself is a refreshing change of pace. Set in a fictional, slightly quirky Midwestern town, it features distinct points of interest like a massive mall and a large lake. The arsenal remains grounded in reality, featuring standard pistols, SMGs, LMGs, and traditional throwables like frag grenades and molotovs.
To keep the pacing fast, especially for console players, the looting system has been heavily simplified. Gear is broken down into easily identifiable color tiers (Blue, Purple, Gold). Better yet, picking up a weapon attachment automatically equips it to your gun, instantly swapping out inferior parts without forcing you into a clunky inventory menu.
Because the current beta is strictly for consoles, the gameplay relies heavily on aim assist. For players who prefer pure, unassisted raw input, the gunplay might feel entirely too floaty and automated. The movement uses modern engine tech but still feels a bit rigid; getting stuck on small pieces of geometry or invisible walls happened frequently enough to be an annoyance.
However, the biggest point of friction in PUBG DED.NET is the ability system. While creating custom classes sounds great on paper, the execution right now is wildly unbalanced.
For example, there is a "Snake" ability that allows players to go prone and slide around the map indefinitely at high speeds, popping up to shoot with virtually no penalty. Another ability, "Smoking Kills," enlarges smoke grenades and highlights enemies caught inside them essentially giving the user temporary wallhacks. Another passive buff completely negates headshot damage multipliers.
The fatal flaw here is a lack of visual feedback. In a shooter, if an enemy has an overpowered ability, you need to know about it so you can counter it. In DED.NET, there is no way to know an enemy is immune to headshots until your bullets fail to do damage. There is no warning that an enemy can see through the smoke screen you just deployed. Without visual cues, fights often feel cheap rather than tactical.
The game is trying very hard to be a wacky, edgy, 90s cult classic. Radios blast music across the map, the characters are eccentric, and hit markers flash on the screen like an arcade shooter. It is a massive pivot from the military simulation roots of the original PUBG. Whether or not this Borderlands style humor lands for you will depend entirely on your personal taste, but it feels odd attached to the PUBG name.
PUBG DED.NET feels like it doesn't know who its audience is. It is too arcade heavy for traditional PUBG fans, yet lacks the polish required to pull players away from giants like Apex Legends or Call of Duty. If Krafton can balance the abilities, add a Solo mode, and clean up the UI, there might be a fun game buried under the quirkiness.
