Review: Hyper Scape

Kind of relaxed, actually

Have we reached peak Battle Royale?

Well, the house that H1Z1, PUBG en Fortnite built are welcome in many imitators, from the indie scene to the big leagues.

Hyper Scape is Ubisoft’s attempt to step up to the plate, but like many other Ubisoft projects, it needs some work until it’s ready for prime time.

Hyper Scape (PC [reviewed], PS4, Xbox One)
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Releases: August 11, 2020
MSRP: Free-to-play (with microtransactions)

Thank God, Hyper Scape has a solo queue. You can also dive with squads (of three), but guys: a solo option is pretty much a must if a battle generous wants to keep my attention for long.

Whether you do it yourself or with friends, the yeast is ultimately the same. Your task is to delete 99 people and become the last person / team. It’s probably a battle generous! You dive with a little battle pod thing out of the sky and then ransack buildings for loot until one person is left. While Hyper Scape is dabbling in bright lore and has a decent amount of personality with his aesthetic “Daft Punk Helmet”, it’s still quite a battle generous joint. It probably will not make you a believer.

Mechanically and on a fundamental level, Hyper Scape does some fun things as a shooter, see the other side of the battle generous shell. In addition to getting “hacks” (power-ups like temporary mantles or a healing burst), you can also practice a host of weapons from traditional shotguns to games like gravity guns. Ammo, fortunately, is universal – any attempt to get me out of micro-management from a giant cover inventory in any battle generous match is welcome.

Hyper ScapeThe main strength is that it quickly brings you into skirmishes (once you’ve been on the map) and lets you intuitively distinguish objects; because everything is very visual. You can swap hacks when you find new ones or “upgrade” duplicates: a system that also applies to weapons. The High Time to Kill (TTK) will be a point of controversy, but given that the battle royale genre takes so much time from players, I’m ready to work it through. Double jumping feels great, especially when combined with the neat “floating metropolis” aesthetic of the cityscape map. That city also has a few tricks up its sleeve to spice things up.

Instead of the tropical “enclosed circle” tropic, you have sectors that gradually dematerialize and close, making each round feel a little different. Then there are the temporary Twitch-based anomalies (such as lower gravity or faster speed of movement) and the crown finale: allowing players to stick to a trinket for a longer period of time to grab a win. Hyper Scape brings the Apex idea of ​​reviving while also playing as a spirit of sorts for your team – oh, and it has a basic ping system that Apex Legends forced everyone to include as a baseline.

Many of these things are cool in motion, but light adjustments in the macro view. Play Hyper Scape leaving once and twice and contentedly is a completely different feeling than playing it for days. Much of the city is starting to become homogenized, some of the guns are merging and there are clear overperforming heels that you will want to look for every time. The Twitch interaction is extremely gimmicky; a decision of the boardroom meant primarily to drive viewership and rough numbers.

As for the PC side of things, my games have been mostly stable and laugh-free; but I had a match accident when I was in the top 10. Matches can also take a bit to stand in queues if you wait in minutes in a boring lobby. With the beta period over, this is something that should be smoothed out as soon as possible. While the ‘playable lobby’ may seem cool at first, it usually features a menu with two options for queuing and premium purchases.

Hyper Scape is free to play, but as expected, it works both on a slaughter pass and on a market: a literal carbon copy of Epic Games’ Fortnite model that basically everyone uses now. You can unlock free items at a basic slaughterhouse tier or opt for the “premium pass”, which is roughly $ 10 and makes you net more cosmetics. What you see is what you get.

By working your way through the premium track, you can also earn the amount of Bitcrowns (premium currency) you have spent on the pass itself. So far, it seems like an offensive system. The same goes for the (daily and weekly) market, which offers new Champions (characters, all of whom have no extra mechanics or features) and skins. It’s very easy to ignore, in part because a lot of the cosmetics are pretty dull at launch (fine by me).

Hyper Scape has some cool ideas, but still feels like it’s in beta, even after the 1.0 launch, especially on PC. We’ve overcome Ubisoft’s jaws of “something underwhelming” before. Maybe they can do it again.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the free-to-play game downloaded by the reviewer.]}

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Hyper Scape checked by Chris Carter