Darwin Project vs Last Man Standing
Darwin Project
Darwin Project is an early access, third-person battle royale game that combines the game show-theme from The Culling with the unique art style which made Fortnite Battle Royale so easily recognizable. Unlike most battle royale games where you'll have to compete against 99 other players to survive, this game only has 10 players, including yourself. However, the game spices things up with a ton of challenges, much like those featured in the Hunger Games, that are designed to push you to your limits.Not to mention, the game adds a nice tracking mechanism. Players in the game show will leave clues when they pass by an area and you can use those very clues to determine where your prey is heading to or hiding in. There are plenty of fun power-ups that you can collect, including temporary invisibility. Although you can't craft new weapons, the bow and shovel that you get can be upgraded to increase their deadliness.
Best yet, you can also play as the Director of the entire game show. As the Director, your goal is not to survive but to hype things up enough for the crowd to go wild. You are managing an exciting game show, after all. With feedback from the audience, you can decide which zones to drop a nuke on or which zone to freeze over, or even when to drop a "care package" for the participants to fight over.
Darwin Project manages to breathe new life into the slowly-stagnating battle royale genre. It is definitely a fun, thrilling and unique competitive MMO - one that fans of battle royale would just love to play.
Last Man Standing
Last Man Standing is a battle royale game that is similar to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) in many ways, including graphically and gameplay-wise, but you often have to remind yourself that being a free-to-play version, this game does have its own set of flaws. For starters, although the map in this game is as vast as PUBG's, there are no vehicles in Last Man Standing, forcing you to travel large distances on foot. There isn't any bullet tracers or obvious muzzle flashes in this game either so it can be quite difficult for you to pin-point from where you are being shot at.Some players also report having frame rate drops which may indicate poor game optimization and well, since there isn't any anti-cheat in the game, you will have to content with having some cheaters in the game (still less than 50% of the time though). Matchmaking takes quite some time as well since the player base in this game is obviously a lot less than PUBG or even Fortnite Battle Royale.
That said, the game has some redeeming qualities aside from being free-to-play, such as having a fun and sometimes intense and competitive gameplay; insanely in-depth character customizations where you can earn more outfits and clothes by playing; a nice arsenal of weapons that you can find and use, including the very useful riot shield-like barriers; multiple game modes (solo, duo and team-based), and more.
So, Last Man Standing is a pretty decent alternative - the free-to-play sort - if you're looking to play a game that's more similar to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds rather than the more cartoonish-looking Fortnite Battle Royale. Granted that this game isn't at all perfect and that apparently the devs won't be patching this game up anytime soon, this is the best you'll probably get!