Live All Your Murderous Rampage Fantasies Here…
Yo, Cam here. It’s the time of the year again where I write something. The rest of the time I’m either asleep or can’t be bothered. Recently I’ve been playing The Culling (Game preview) for Xbox One, and it’s alright. King of the hill games are dominating right now, with games such as Player Unknown Battlegrounds and H1Z1. So being the first king of the hill to come to Xbox One, it instantly caught my attention.
Before I explain the ups and downs to this meme of a game, I guess I should explain what it is. The Culling is a stylish, melee based king of the hill game that requires moderate skill. When you kill people you earn a currency called func which is used to buy better weapons in match, so that you can murder people easier. This forces players to be aggressive in order to survive. The goal is obvious, win. The combat can be easiest described as Rock Paper Scissors. Well, kinda. You can shove, block or attack. Predicting your opponents move and countering it is the way to win.
Alrighty, down to the important bits. Think I’ll do gameplay first. The Culling is a king of the hill that puts 18 players against each other at once. That could be in doubles or singles, depending on what you choose. Winning matches rewards you with loot crates that give you stuff that makes your character look like a meme. But that’s just the thing, your odds of winning as a new player are rock bottom. The gameplay relies mostly on the combat and the gathering of currency to get your airdrop, which contains items of your choice. Func can be acquired through killing players or through selling items at the blue machines.
I enjoy the game and think its combat is great, but I’m not going to lie, the gameplay must be pretty boring for new players. In order to survive against other players you need to get better items which means every match you need to grind func, which gets real old real fast. That’s also if you don’t get hunted by high levels like myself who hunt other players and kill them for easy currency. Being a small player base currently, you will find that the same high level players will ruin the experience for you repeatedly. If you can get good at the combat though, butchering other people and being the only survivor feels pretty cool.
Now that my gameplay rant is over, the graphics. The game doesn’t really aim to look realistic, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t pretty. The player characters in particular are cartoonish and fit the games style. The clothing items you can get from loot crates are pretty cool, and give something for you to aim for. The sun and lighting etc in the game is pretty good, even things such as shading seem to fit pretty well. Up close visuals could do with some work, but I’m not exactly expecting something great from a smaller game such as this. On the whole though, the landscape from higher points in the maps is quite pretty.
Here’s the section where I would talk about music in the game, but the game pretty much has no music or story. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as most other king of the hill games don’t have them either. Instead I’d like to talk about Chad, who is the main reason the game is so stylish. The backstory of The Culling is that its just a load of criminals put inside a TV show to murder each other for entertainment. The presenter of this TV show, Chad, is a funny meme. Through in game speakers and machines Chad has bucket loads of funny lines to mock you and lighten the mood. I’d compare his character to Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2. He’s a real dick, but he’s funny and entertaining. He also makes tons of references and jokes that are funny the first time you hear them, but lose their charm after you hear them for the 10th time.
Overall, this game is alright. I wouldn’t recommend it right now as it is a game preview and still has quite a few bugs and glitches. The small player base also means that new players cannot enjoy the experience without being destroyed by high levels within the first few minutes of every match. I usually keep up to date with new games, which is how I found out about this game. Perhaps after time the player base will rise. If this game eventually sees a proper release maybe these things will change. So, if you play this game and get killed by some deeb named M3CHR0, that’s me.
68/100
IWantúToDieú, Cam.
Stuff and That. 