The battle royale craze has brought us everything from the gritty, slow-paced combat of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds to the colorful and intense Fortnite: Battle Royale. Those awesome experiences have led to plenty of imitators, but Unbroken Studios Fractured Lands stands out from the pack by making you feel like a survivor battling it out on the Fury Road.
Coming to Steam Early Access this summer, Fractured Lands is a 100-person battle royale game from former Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and Battlefield developers that combines traditional first-person shooting with vehicular action.
You won’t only be using your vehicle to outrun enemies or quickly traverse the environment. Instead, it’s a weapon in its own right, and you can outfit it with upgrades that would make Max Rockatansky proud. In the game’s announcement trailer, we see a giant plow attached to the front, as well as rocket boosters that allow vehicles to easily run down those still on foot. It can also carry extra inventory, so you won’t be limited to whatever your own bag holds. When cars collide, they do so with an enormous fiery explosion, which fits the game’s over-the-top apocalyptic setting perfectly.
If you do find yourself without a vehicle, you still have a chance at survival. Snappy gunplay resembles the developers’ previous work and looks to be a step above what we see in many current battle royale offerings, and clouds of blood make it easy to tell when you’ve hit another player.
“Fractured Lands is an experience that epitomizes our passion for this genre but also exemplifies both our experience in developing some of the best shooters in the world and our craving for something innovation, tense, and gritty,” said Unbroken Studios CEO Paul Ohanian in a press release.
The game is taking very clear inspiration from the Mad Max franchise, specifically the excellent sequel Mad Max: Fury Road, with enormous brown clouds and lightning storms giving the game even more tension than the simple threat of being murdered by 99 other people. Whether or not that inspiration leads to a worthwhile battle royale game remains to be seen.
If you’re interested in trying our Fractured Lands before it hits Steam Early Access, the game will be running three closed beta tests on the weekends of June 8, June 22, and June 29. You can register at the game’s website.
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