A First Look at Survival Game The Culling
Ted Hentschke
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It maintains this faster clip through simplified, but not stupefied mechanics. Crafting is easy and intuitive, as players just need to smash whatever is in their hand into whatever they want to craft it with to make a desired item. About 30 seconds into any round, even the newest player should be armed with their first stone dagger. There are only a few rudimentary designs, as the game focuses more on the scavenging element. Various buildings scatter the map, and within are a number of chests, lockers, and cabinets that must be explored to find better weapons and items. As it stands, it’s all pretty basic, but the map is large and diverse enough to make each match unique.
Lucky players will find some tier 2 or 3 weapons in the easy to open lockers and crates, but more valuable locked chests with higher tier loot requires you to spend your hard earned F.U.N.C.. Earned through a mix of survival, exploration, recycling, and murder, F.U.N.C. is your catchall credit for buying everything in the game. It will be used to purchase healing from the healing stations, air drops from the air drop stations, and unlocks from the chest unlocking stations. Each of these open you up to ganking, so it’s all a risk/reward, but in general the player who earned the most F.U.N.C. will be able to get the best gear.
You can also just suck it out of the decapitated heads and scattered bones of previous contestants. Hurrah capitalism!
What’s brilliant about this design is that it forces players to move around. I know I’m not alone when I say that campers are the fucking worst. I understand that you feel like the Predator when you post up on a roof for 4 hours, waiting for the perfect moment to shoot me in the head and take my loot. I don’t possess that kind of monk like dedication, and it’s annoying. While it’s possible to camp in The Culling, the single use loot chests and exploration experience makes it a risky proposition. If you don’t manage to snare at least a few flies in your trap, you’ll be undergeared for the final confrontation.
There are some vestigial timed events that I won’t spend too much time going over. At set intervals in a round, a random crate with high tier loot will spawn at an announced location. There isn’t a map currently and I didn’t have enough time with the game to learn the names of all the locations, so I was never able to willingly participate in these events. I get the idea behind it, allowing players to weigh the risk and reward of these early skirmishes, but it’s just not well enough implemented in this alpha state.
Mr. Sneaky doesn’t have time for your chainshaw bullshit. Mr. Sneaky is here for loot. Mr. Sneaky has his priorities in order. Be more like Mr. Sneaky.
Which leads me to the big elephant in the room: this is just alpha. It has all the negative aspects of an alpha product, with some poor tutorials, clunky combat, and imbalanced gear. I have no idea what the various benefits of bleeds, poisons, cripples, and stuns are, other than that one makes my screen all green and I barf randomly. The game has an intuitive enough interface that I can easily figure out which weapon does the most damage, but the numbers displayed didn’t seem to match the damage I was doing.
No matter what kind of build you are going for, there always wound up being a few key optimal items. The blowgun, one of the first weapons you can craft, is absolutely vital even in the late game. It only hits for a handful of damage, but applies a poison that disorients and debilitates for an extended period of time. Guns, though rare, are also incredibly powerful, able to take down enemies in a few shots. The tracker is vital for scavenging unmolested, and heaven help you if you try to beat an armored enemy in melee. A number of other players complained about explosives, but I have to give them a pass. They are so rare and unwieldy that you often wind up killing yourself as much as your opponent.
Wow, thank god I have my handy dandy “time for murder” machine!
Without a gun or grenade, combat is a slow game of Rock-Paper-Scissors-Bow. Blocking beats attacking, pushing beats blocking, and attacking beats pushing. Bow beats rock, paper, and scissors, until you are in their face smashing them with your rocks and scissors. You try to whittle them down as much as possible with whatever ranged weapons you have to gain an edge in the frantic melee to come. Weapons can be thrown, but don’t deal enough damage to make it worth the risk. There are also charge attacks, but any kind of damage knocks you out of your swing, making little stabs the preferred method.
Or playful little bonks. Bonk!
Overall, killing an enemy is an arduous process, even with one of those massive damaging backstabs I mentioned earlier. The strongest weapons only hit for small chunks of damage. It can be frustrating to chunk away only to fail when your foe is but a hair from death, but it’s worth it to not be one-shot from nowhere. There’s some interesting stuff you can do with traps, but these are all but useless in the final confrontation. Most games will come down to a brutal final melee.
They even have a nice and flashy final arena for you to duke it out in!
Despite all the flaws, The Culling in its alpha state is still a more polished and presentable game than many of its more “finished” contemporaries. The struggle to the top of the food chain is satisfying, and the short rounds mean that death isn’t that big of a deal. Sure, when you die, you’re out for good, but you can quickly just jump into a new round and start all over again. It’s the perfect blend of survival and action, allowing you to take some risks without the punishment being a loss of several grueling hours of effort.
In the months to come, I’m looking forward to seeing how The Culling evolves. One of the most crucial fixes is to make sure that teammates spawn close to each other. In the pairs mode, I frequently was crushed by a group that spawned 200 yards away, while my teammate cobbled together some sticks on the other side of the island. A more robust tutorial would be nice, too. I can see there being some kind of leveling system implemented, as there were already a couple of hidden unlocks I stumbled across. Tighten up the combat some and make weapons more unique, and I can see this being my go-to survival game. Just don’t fuck it up with microtransactions.
My time with The Culling was brief, but it left me craving more. Games in alpha are generally little more than stress tests, but The Culling’s faster style and variety gave me a glimpse of something great. For survival game fans, this is definitely one to keep an eye on. I’ll see you guys in the beta, and let you know what I think of stabbing people to death as it evolves.
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
