Darwin Project vs The Culling
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.
The Culling
The Culling is, in many ways, a potentially great PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds alternative game. In fact, many would say that this is perhaps the very first standalone, battle royale game that is inspired directly from the Hunger Games. As such, you'll expect a pretty brutal arena set on a remote island where players will not only need to explore the foreign land to scavenge for resources but also to craft a wide variety of weapons, traps and tools just so you can ambush your fellow players. Naturally, being battle royale and all, the last man standing will be the victor.Each match can contain up to 16 contestants (and yes, like Hunger Games, The Culling is apparently a game show) and the game lasts for around 20 minutes. There is also a tutorial, a training mode where you play against AI bots, and a special 8-player Lightning Round where players get access to the best weapons early on in the game. As a game show, the "organizers" will often spice things up with special in-match events that have some pretty crucial rewards too. Like the Hunger Games, players can also each call in an airdrop (a.k.a. "care package") containing valuable items but getting to that airdrop in one piece without having your stuff stolen before you reach there can be quite a challenge in itself.
Now, unlike PUBG's shooter-heavy gameplay, The Culling has a more visceral, action-based, melee-oriented gameplay that will make every successful kill a very satisfying one. Don't get me wrong - the game does have ranged options like bows and guns but having a firearm or any ranged weapons may not be an advantage if you don't know how to keep your distance. Players can easily be disarmed of their ranged weapon if they are ambushed by a melee player, and of course, if you missed your aim, you may not have a second shot.
However, due to a plague of problems between the developers and its community, The Culling seems to be a pretty dead game at the moment and hence, finding a match can be quite difficult. Similar to PUBG, The Culling is not a free game either and this game is on the pricey end considering its almost non-existant player base.