The Culling (PC) Review

The Culling is one of the older Battle Royale games and last year it seems to have finally come to an end. The gameplay and the idea of The Culling were very reminiscent of the Hunger Games and probably intended to attract viewers of the popular Hunger Games movie franchise. In contrast to a lot of other Battle Royale games only 20 people in comparison to the usual 100 compete in a match. Melee was a big focus of the game and it certainly has a different atmosphere than you experience in most other BR-games. 

As far as I know, there are two different maps, a giant jungle and a prison. There are various buildings, cages etc on the maps and exploring and looting is certainly an important part of every match. Players could choose between playing classic battle royale games and survival mode, which pits you in an arena, where you have to fight robotic enemies in multiple rounds till you die. Optionally player can also participate in an extensive tutorial, that does a good job at teaching the basics of the Culling, or try out weapons and items on a shooting range.

There are different melee weapons in the game, from stones, sticks, axes till pitchforks and so on. There are also bows, blow pipes and even guns and grenades available. These weapons can either be found on the map or crafted with materials. Unnecessary items can be sold at vending machines and at some machines you can even regenerate health points. Sometimes there are gas canons scattered along the map, which can be used to poison other players. Every match has a time limit of 20 minutes. Till the end of every game a fog of poisoned air will make the zone available to the players, smaller and smaller till the final combat near an arena in the middle of the map. 

So far this sounds like most other Battle Royale games. What made the Culling stand out from the rest, was the unique melee combat, which could be quite tactical and most certainly intense. Aside from attacks, which could be charged up, the player could block or push enemies in order to cancel the block of other players. Hitting an enemy, while he blocks, results in the player being stunned for a short time. This combat system worked quite well and was the best part of the game. The controls in general functioned sufficiently and are quite customizable. A feature that I always appreciate. (Too many games claim keys/controls customizability, but lack to fully support it.) The jungle map was also done quite well and enabled player to explore quite a bit and generally got a nice survival atmosphere. The visual presentation of the game is fitting and could be described as alright till good. There might be even prettier games out there, but the Culling certainly doesn't leave a bad visual impression either. 

One of the main reasons for the financial failure of this game was the direction in which this game has been developed. Many players liked the original status of the game, but started to dislike it more with every further update. The dissatisfaction of the players showed itself in constantly dropping player numbers. 

For the longest time The Culling was offered as an early access game till the game got fully released in late 2017. Just a few weeks later the developers announced a stop of further content in order to focus on the upcoming The Culling 2. Culling 2 turned in summer of 2018 into one of the worst launch disasters in the history of videogames and got terminated within a few days. In the following autumn the developers announced plans to refocus on the original Culling game. It was patched back to an earlier status of the game and got released as a f2p game named The Culling:Origins. On the 15th of May 2019 the online game servers have due to lacking numbers of players been permanently shut down. The offline modes on the other hand are supposed to remain usable in the future. What I don't understand why other players can't download the game for offline play anymore. I have the game still installed, so I can consider myself lucky. I know people who wanted to try out the game before it shut down, but Xaviant already deleted the download function one week before the server termination...

Pro:

-Fantastic melee combat

-Great Survival atmosphere

-Good variety of different weapons

Contra:

-Bad Developer

-Online servers shut down

Result:

The game and the fun it provided through its survival atmosphere and the unique combat get a 7/10 from me. Xaviant and their handling of Culling 1 and 2 I would probably rate much, much lower. Maybe the offline-version can still be found somewhere on the internet, even that alone would be worth trying out.

7/10