Rail gunner: PUBG adding live train to Vikendi map

PUBG map Vikendi will return with several added or expanded features, including a train. — AFP Relaxnews

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds will join Apex Legends and Fortnite in adding its own variation on mass transit.

PUBG is welcoming back the missing Vikendi map as part of a limited test available to PUBG Partners and those that join their custom games.

Having debuted in December 2018 as the game's fourth playable map, Vikendi's mountainous snowscape was pulled from standard rotation one year later, at the start of Season 6.

In exchange, game developer PUBG Corp gave players a new desert map, Karakin, with the December 2019 update.

"We'll be going in and doing a bigger revamp of the map than we've previously done," the studio said at the time. "When it's time for (Vikendi) to come back, there will be plenty of new stuff for you to explore and enjoy."

In addition to expanding disused tourist attraction Dino Park, turning it into Dinoland, tinkering with town locations, and reducing the amount of snow cover, railroads and trains have been added across the 2x2km island.

An initial weekend test period will be held from March 5 at 11pm PST (March 6 at 3pm Malaysia) to the same time on March 8 (March 9, Malaysia).

Players can try it by joining a PUBG Partner's custom match, a Partner being one of the game's accredited live streamers.

Season 7 is expected to begin after the current season ends, on April 14 on PC and April 21 on PS4 and XBO, with an accompanying Survivor Pass that confers various perks and benefits for regular players.

As a result, it's unlikely that this first test weekend for the new Vikendi will be its last, as community feedback is fed back into the design process.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is widely credited with pushing the last-person-standing Battle Royale format into the mainstream.

It was followed by Knives Out and Free Fire, which maintained a military aesthetic, as well as the more caricatured Fortnite and then, in 2019, the sci-fi oriented Apex Legends.

Apex Legends introduced the volcanic World's Edge, its second map, in October 2019, with one of its distinguishing features being an electric train.

While Fortnite hasn't yet gone as far as implementing a rail system, it did add an airborne Slipstream circuit for Season 9's May to July 2019 run. – AFP Relaxnews