It just might be the game’s strongest aspect. It’s not all bad though, and both the maps available are well-designed, interesting and fun to be in. I encountered constant frame rate drops and ridiculous amounts of texture pop in every single match. There’s practically no background music or sound effects to speak of, so often I was simply wandering around a forest in complete silence, wondering what I was doing with my life and debating why anyone would want to pay for more matches of this.Īll of this is supplemented by a poor technical performance, at least on the original Xbox One. But when you do find a gun or a bow it’s a massive relief, because you’re finally free from using your crappy knife or spear.įor most of the time I have spent with The Culling: Origins on Xbox One though, I just felt bored.

And this is truly unfortunate because this is the majority of what you do in this game. And don’t get me started on the melee combat, it feels beyond clunky and not satisfying at all – floaty and impotent – like you’re always swinging at air. Crafting generally seems pointless and a bit of a waste of time, as much better equipment is easily found throughout the map if you spend just a little time searching around. However both of those defining characteristics are flawed and neither are implemented well. For most of the time, players attack each other with knives, hatchets, pitchforks and spears.

And it also provides a heavy emphasis on melee combat as effective long range weapons are few and far between. What separates The Culling from others in the genre is that there is an emphasis on crafting weapons and healing items on your own. The game can be played by yourself or in duos, as you run around a large area scouring for items, weapons, and FUNC, which is a currency used to open and call in supply crates. Matches start as you might expect, with you dropped in on a large map with several other players the last one to stay alive wins. The Culling: Origins is not anything terrible – it’s just very generic and painfully average.

The culling free