I was lucky enough to get a Twitch drop for the tech test of Hyper Scape and have played the game for around 7-8 hours already. This is the fastest-paced Battle Royale ever and it has definitely tried hard to take the genre in a different direction.
Although this is the first tech test of the game, it was already extremely unforgiving. It doesn’t take long for good FPS players to assert their dominance in a game, and the more I played the more I realised that this was going to be a tricky learning curve for the casual player.
The map itself is easy to understand – everything is clearly labelled and it doesn’t really matter where you land. Even playing solo with random squadmates communication was easy with a fully-fleshed out Apex Legends-style ping system.
Looting isn’t difficult either. There are distinct shapes and icons for each gun and Hack and lootable areas are clearly marked with an Orange breakable barricade. You can loot a whole building in 20 seconds if you want to.
Once you’re out of the short looting phase, it’s nothing but action for the rest of the game. That’s not an exaggeration. There is almost constant fighting as 100 players are pushed together by the collapsing virtual city.
Some players will love the fact that this is a Battle Royale with absolutely no downtime. The genre has come a long way from the slow-crawl through the bushes of PUBG’s Erangel. Hyper Scape’s virtual city is no place for campers.
However, the constant fighting is both a boon and a warning sign that this game isn’t for the faint-hearted. To be honest, it’s exhausting. I’m not the FPS player I once was and I can tell that getting to grips with this game is going to be an uphill battle.
The movement is incredibly slick. Probably the best combat movement I’ve experienced in an FPS, let alone a Battle Royale. By the end of my 8 hours playtime, I was no expert, but I had figured out that the Slam/Invisibility hack combo is 100% the way forwards.
But because the movement is so brilliant it means it’s very easy to get punished by better players. Again, some will love this part about the game: it’s perceivable enormous skill ceiling. Others will struggle to play this game casually.
Ultimately, playing the game for a day felt like an exciting aim-trainer where the chance of death is extremely high. People are flying all over the place, going invisible, dropping walls. A levelled-up sniper headshot will destroy you in one shot and rocket launchers and grenades obliterate you.
Overall, Hyper Scape is a pretty fun experience. It’s not like any other Battle Royale game and feels a lot like Valorant, Apex Legends and old-school Quake smashed together. But it is unforgiving, and in the future, it might be difficult for the casual player to get involved.
(As an aside, it will be interesting to see how the game performs on consoles. Aim and tracking are essential parts of Hyper Scape – not exactly something that’s brilliant on a controller.)
