The full-motion video (FMV) genre has a tumultuous history, and it was never certain that it would survive its earliest iterations. While film and gaming are both beloved, their meeting point in FMV is often regarded as a misuse of the best qualities of both.

RELATED: Best Battle Royale Games Playable On Xbox

Yet the success of Bloodshore and other recent titles show that the genre is anything but dead. Whether one loves Bloodshore for its game show premise, its gore, its gunplay, or its over-the-top characters, there is a battle royale (BR) game out there to suit one's tastes. Bloodshore may not have a game of its own, but its DNA can be found in some of the genre's best and most interesting titles.

10 Call of Duty: Warzone

Call of Duty Warzone Players Are Demanding Combat Scout Changes

At its most basic, Bloodshore is about hunting and being hunted by strangers, and Call of Duty: Warzone is one of the most popular embodiments of that core concept. Call of Duty: Warzone may emphasize vehicle usage and map traversal in ways that Bloodshore does not, but the characters in both require lethal and dependable weaponry to escape death.

The largely generic G.I.s of Call of Duty: Warzone may not have the personality to match Nick and the gang. However, the title has no shortage of entertaining munitions to keep players entertained as they fight for their lives.

9 Cuisine Royale

A character from Cuisine Royale aiming their rifle

There are legitimate pros and cons to every battle royale. Whether someone wants zany antics or a hardcore mil-sim experience, there's a place for every gamer. Cuisine Royale offers something of each. It sets itself apart by featuring WWII equipment and intense gunplay alongside the mystic powers and cooking pots worn as armor.

Cuisine Royale this love of juxtaposition with Bloodshore: the violent and the colorful blend into one another to make a BR experience unlike any other. The game might consider itself a joke, but the gunplay and action are nothing but serious.

8 H1Z1

H1Z1 Trailer Screenshot
H1Z1: Battle Royale (2015)

Bloodshore wouldn't exist without H1Z1, nor would any battle royale. As an evolution of Arma and DayZ, H1Z1 pioneered the concepts upon which every other great BR was built. It isn't flashy or pretentious; it's a solid, exciting shooter.

While H1Z1 deserves a look for its influence on the genre as a whole, it also stands on its own as a strong gameplay experience. Those looking for a stripped-down BR experience will find it here, and H1Z1 is an accessible entry point for the genre as a whole. As it shirks the nitty-gritty micromanagement of detailed gun-modding and the over-the-top unpredictability of instant sky towers, H1Z1 is a solid middle-lane shooter with which to kill some hours.

7 Hunt: Showdown

Two hunters posing back to back in the swamp in Hunt: Showdown

A fantastic first-person shooter and innovative battle royale, Hunt: Showdown eschews modern and futuristic warfare in favor of something grounded in early American history, albeit a history twisted by the presence of the supernatural. In this weird western, players compete with other bounty hunters to kill a supernatural beast and escape before their rivals strike them down and steal their prize.

Audio is an integral part of survival in this game, with every crunch of a boot on broken glass betraying one's position. Like Bloodshore, the world of Hunt: Showdown is ruthless, and both games do their best to innovate and expand the battle royale genre.

6 Fortnite

fortnite leaf village quest board

The name Fortnite is inescapable in the battle royale scene. Its in-game concerts, wild skins, unique building mechanics, and free-to-play status make it one of the best battle royales for beginners.

What Fortnite contains more than anything else is personality. Whether riding atop a flying saucer, battling dinosaurs as Batman, or flying a witch's broom into battle against Rick and Morty, Fortnite overflows with opportunities for shenanigans. Its cartoonish, kiddish aesthetic might be quite the departure from Bloodshore's blood and gore, but the sharp contrasts between its characters put it in line.

5 Crab Game

crab game red light green  light minigame

Based on the wildly popular TV show Squid Game, Crab Game is a unique battle royale in which competitors try to survive a series of brutal minigames — and the losers explode. Given the game's unforgiving ragdoll physics and general wonkiness, it's common to see three-quarters of the field perish during Red Light Green Light in the first two minutes.

RELATED: Best Battle Royale Games Playable On Nintendo Switch

The simple visuals and single character model can trick players into thinking the game will be easy or has no depth, but neither is the case. Best played with as many friends as one can herd together for an evening of friendly heckling and victorious cackling, Crab Game is about brutal deaths in a surrealist, gameshow atmosphere. Of all existing battle royales, Crab Game may offer the closest thing to a spectator sport, playing out like the nerve-wracking TV show that inspired it.

4 Apex Legends

apex-legends-ash

Top-notch gunplay, silky movement mechanics, and large, diverse maps with killer verticality are all major selling points for Apex Legends. Without its titular Legends, however, it's unlikely the game would ever have reached its overwhelming popularity.

Building unique team compositions that play to each character's strength, be that tracking, teleportation, or dropping lethal gas traps, sets Apex Legends apart. Other battle royale games have included characters with unique powers to trounce the competition, but arguably none have done it better than Apex. There's a reason that even after getting shotgunned 30 seconds after landing, players keep coming back.

3 Escape From Tarkov

A combatant with their gun in the streets in Escape from Tarkov

Some battle royales are light-hearted and welcoming, so that before too long, even casual gamers can find a second home there. Not Escape from Tarkov. This hardcore military simulation is punishing in every way. It demands patience, vigilance, a keen eye and a keener ear, and the willingness to get sniped a hundred times by an unseen scavenger before learning the maps.

RELATED: Battlefield 2042 Was Originally Battle Royale Game Influenced By Apex Legends

Yet for many players, the game's draw is undeniable. Its fastidious inventory management borders on Tetris, and its gun-modding is peerless. Its raids are nerve-destroying stealth missions, punctuated by gunfights fast and electric enough to shame lightning. No matter how much its players suffer or how many roubles they lose, many will always return.

2 PUBG: Battlegrounds

PUBG Update Lets Players Carry Their Downed Teammates

More than almost any other battle royale, PUBG: Battlegrounds forgoes elaborate additional systems in favor of honing the core mechanics that make any battle royale great: gunplay, scavaging, and tactical supremacy.

With its hardboiled realism benefiting in every way from the lessons learned by H1Z1 developer Brendan Greene, PUBG: Battlegrounds has a grittiness that would be at home in the split-second violent world of Bloodshore. It may forgo innovation in other areas, but by doubling down on the essentials, PUBG: Battlegrounds achieves a kind of battle royale purity that elevates it to the genre's highest tier.

1 Scum

scum newbie

In Scum, as in Bloodshore, criminals are dropped on an island to battle to the death in the name of television glory. Both games are eccentric, violent, and have a player-base with very specific expectations and demands. Yet in the battle royale space, there's nothing else quite like Scum.

Forget mere hunger as a survival mechanic. In Scum, players must balance their vitamin and nutrient intake, or they die. A shirt can be shredded into rags and crafted into a rope. Loot appears where it logically should, not dumped at random in the middle of the floor. Scum is a prickly game that isn't for everyone, but in its own way so is Bloodshore. And that hasn't stopped either from developing their own adoring communities.

MORE: Tips To Get Ahead In Apex Legends Solo Mode