The Culling 2 Review

"Generic Battle Royale"

Multiplayer

I'm not entirely sure what the point of The Culling 2 was, but this screams desperate. I've never seen such a lazily thrown together game, which carries what seems like little to no effort and is completely abysmal. It's shocking someone had the tenacity to actually release this is a final version without considering Early Access first.

It wouldn't have sold any in that format either I suppose as this is straight up an abomination. It's a complete cash grab trying to tap into the hot battle royale market as a premium experience that feels worse than any mobile attempt I've seen at this point.

It's shocking considering the original Culling actually tried to be different and this aims to be a quick surprise release copying the popular battle royale titles. The game is multiplayer only with no player base and the only game mode is to play in singles as a free for all. The options for duos and squads are there too, but good luck getting a match of that. Seriously, best of luck unless you're boosting.

That aside you collect crates for completing matches and can buy clothing items such as hair, yep you need to purchase hair as a decoration since everyone starts bald. After you've waited a fair bit of time for a small sum of players, most I've seen is thirty and fewest matches have started at around ten you jump into generic battle royale action.

Gameplay

It's a simple idea, you jump from a helicopter and grab loot. There are many houses, buildings and other structures to do this within. Most of the structures are the exact same throughout and this is mirrored with the majority of the areas, that is if they aren't large empty fields that are lacking grass. The visuals are vomit inducing, it's ugly and runs horribly.

On the Xbox One X it's alright, but that's because you rarely see anyone in this empty map. Whenever you do come across someone the performance is bad even on the premium console. The trees look like they're painted in, the grass is ugly and 2D, the textures look terrible on most buildings. The draw distance is decent, except most objects don't load in from very far away and you'll see a lot of pop-in for many items or structures.

Every single door is glitchy in terms of visibility, I've had crashes and I've seen button prompts missing showing as "default" across the screen. The map looks horrible, there were times where my character didn't show up on the map. The game carries the generic gas pushing you forward towards the middle in case you were wondering, the late game is the only time you see others.

The cloud pushing you forward is piss yellow and it's hard to tell the edges as they're not clear. Combat straight up sucks, you can't tell if you're really hitting people and the guns handle like garbage. It's got any generic weapon you could think of and they all straight up suck to shoot. Everything is rough around the edges here, it's disgusting. The UI for gear was alright, it worked with only minor issues.

The Conclusion

The Culling 2 is the worst game on this generation of consoles, this is the pinnacle of garbage that barely matches what a battle royale game is. This won't be a game for long considering the state of the multiplayer and it'll certainly be quickly forgotten.

With a good reason too as this not only is the most generic take on the battle royale genre I've seen, it completely forgets the interesting origins of the first entry. There's no community here and with this strictly being a premium battle royale offering it'll die out.

This is prior to even considering the poor state of the experience from the atrocious gameplay to the nightmare vomit inducing visuals. The sound is bad, you can't get a sense of space with it and don't even try shooting at a distance since it doesn't work.

The map is not interesting, there was no care spent in crafting this landscape and it seems like this was some sort of hail mary last ditch act of complete desperation from the developer. I try to be fair when reviewing games as I know people work hard on them, but I don't see that this game deserves that thoughtfulness. The Culling 2 is the first thing I've ever scored a zero to, it deserves it fully and completely.

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The Culling 2 Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by ID@Xbox

Rating Overall: 0