The Hunt For Human Flesh!

The Culling, also known as the Hunger Games Game, is a 16 person FPS in which I am dropped into an arena with 15 other players who apparently have been planning to be dropped into the Hunger Games for a long time. They are far more prepared and ready for battle than I am. First game I am dropped in and begin crafting, only to find out you start a lot closer to other players than I thought you did. I am immediately chopped down with a knife from behind. Round one for the Mr. E Man lasted about 1 minute and 30 seconds. Now, if only that was my first impression of the game. But, my actual first impression was when I originally went to play it. I waited in the lobby to find a game for over 15 minutes before I quit looking and went on to something else. So needless to say, my first impression of the Culling was not very good.

However, I say all of that so what I say next will be even weightier. The Culling is a fantastic idea for a game that is currently in pretty rough shape. You need to keep in mind that this is an early access game. I believe The Culling is coming on the heels of the highly successful titles like Rust and DayZ. The birth of these Survival games really taught us what we wanted out of this genre. Following those was Ark, which essentially took everything we loved about a survival game and then was like “here ride a T-Rex as well!”. I love all of these games. I have put a lot of time into all of these games. So to see a game like the Culling that takes elements from those Survival games and turns it into a 16 person free for all is super exciting. I had a blast playing it even though I would say it’s not very well polished right now.

Let me first talk about what The Culling does well. I think the main thing The Culling does well is the whole premise of the game. I believe they found a market that really had not been touched (even though Ark: Survival of the Fittest is essentially the same exact game, and free by the way). The idea of being put in the world of the Hunger Games and essentially choose how you want to go about surviving is awesome. You can sit back and try to let all the other players kill each other off, or you can craft heavy weapons and go out fighting. While playing, you are rewarded FUNC for doing things well. This may be finding a dead body, finding a FUNC machine, killing another player, and sometimes for crafting weapons and recycling them in a machine. This FUNC will allow you to do certain things in the game. If you get enough you can call in an airdrop with a predetermined drop, craft bigger weapons or heal yourself. There are also random supply crates throughout the map. All of these allow you to make or find better weapons. The FUNC concept allows the players to think about the risk vs reward of certain points. I could go for the kill to get FUNC or I could hide and hope to find a supply drop somewhere instead.

The Map design in The Culling is another great part of this game. There are random buildings littered throughout the map that may provide random items in them. However, outside of the buildings are little poison gas chambers. If I am in the building and someone sets one of those off, typically I have to run through the gas to get out which does a good deal of harm. There are also bridges, water, and mountains in the map. It is a very well rounded environment. The games have a time limit of 25 minutes and as the game gets closer to the end, the poison gas will creep in from the outside of the map towards the middle (creepily like the Hunger Games but who am I to say that?). In the middle of the map is a full-on Battle Arena. It is a circle Metal Structure that forces the remaining players at the end of the game to come together in the Coliseum to fight through the blood bath to win the game. The end of the game is far from easy. If you do not come prepared when the time begins to run out, you will  be slaughtered at the end. This is an awesome set up. The end of a match in The Culling is just straight up epic.

Overall, The Culling is a really fun game and fairly well polished in comparison to some of the other early access games out there. It is a game that I will continue to play as it is updated. Considering the player base that The Culling already has (which is huge), and the fact that it is only $14.99 USD on steam, I think this game is an easy pickup. It is super fun to play and as the game gets updated it will only get better.