Does anyone else miss the old days when games, especially first-person shooters weren’t even trying to be realistic? The days when levels were multi-storied and you could get to the next floor by jumping, using an explosion or by standing on jump pads? When the worlds were so science-fictional that portable rail guns were a thing? No? Well then consider me an old fart you young whippersnappers because I sure as hell do.

The last competitive multiplayer game that I enjoyed was Cliffy B’s LawBreakers. It was fun, gravity was a joke, the jetpacks made you feel fast as all hell and the specials were something else. The game modes while inspired by old school games was great as well. While I was reminiscing, I saw Ubisoft offering some of those elements in Hyper Scape. With the open beta currently in motion, I’m going in.

Sound:

The menu and loading screens have a track that was probably leftover from Trackmania 2020. I don’t mind it since you can get into a game pretty quickly so it hasn’t annoyed me yet. In-game music doesn’t exist, being the correct thing to do in competitive shooters so that you can hear enemies before you see them.

The weapons sound unique enough while the special abilities don’t have much by way of sound. The specials or hacks as the game wants us to call them has the most boring sounds ever. Unlike Shadow Warrior where the sound design is amazing, Hyper Scape just sounds average to poor.

Graphics:

I’m a little confused about what went down at the Ubi graphic teams room. The city and guns look good but not great. In some parts, it can look a little washed out but the decay animation is really well done. At some point while doing the decay textures it seems like they forgot to do the rest of the city.

The particle effects while nice are nothing new, the explosions from one of this gun has an expanding glass effect and I really like the flames coming from the drop pods but all of it seems quite weak. I’m hoping they are all improved before the final release but I wouldn’t count on it since the specs have to be low to get the maximum number of people playing.

Gameplay:

Neo-Arcadia is a wonderful home. It’s not a random forest or a flat terrain, it is a well-built city that I can see on a trip to Europe. It is complex, it is well designed with passages and buildings making any European feel at home. No matter how many times you wander around you never feel like you are in the same spot twice except for the landmarks. The positions of the jump pads leave something to be desired but all in all, Neo-Arcadia is the best map I have seen in a battle royal.

Hyper Scape has tons of weapons, some are very believable while some are pure science fiction. You have your shotguns, pistols, SMGs and rifles coupled with some cool Sci-Fi weapons that give out shock damage but the game doesn’t balance them evenly. I say this considering all best-case scenarios: the shotgun and sniper rifle can kill an enemy on the first pickup however just about every other weapon, including the fictional ones, need upgrades or additional ammo to get you a kill. I suspect this imbalance maybe on purpose but if it is, it needs to be corrected to be more neutral.

Keeping the weapons company are “hacks” but let’s call them what they are, special abilities. Nearly all of them suck. Invisibility and teleport should get you out of bad situations but they are so short that an automatic weapon will wreck your day. The hack to turn into a ball gives you no offensive means while being annoying to control. The only good hack is “Heal” which lets you stay on the offensive while recovering health.

Before I go into the final gameplay I need to talk about movement. The Hyper Scape subreddit and various other forums say this game has great movement and I need to ask them: What are you drinking and can I have some? Hyper Scape’s movement is around Unreal Tournament 2004’s level, the pace is okay and double jumps are nice to have but the only thing new is sliding. There is no increasing momentum like you would see in Mirror’s Edge or Titan Fall, the momentum is static. There is no way to speed up like in Unreal Tournament 2004 either. There is fixed momentum combined with double jumping and that’s it. To those who want to talk about the ability to get on roofs, I must ask… Have you never used a jump pad? We have had these things since 1997 at the least, they are not new so stop pretending like they are. A nice addition would be accelerating as you run and a grappling hook that can get you to high points without a jump pad

The gameplay itself is straightforward. Crashland your landing pod wherever you like in Neo-Arcadia and start looking for guns and hacks while hoping you don’t run into someone who is already armed. Being a modern game, which I say while doing air quotes, you can only carry two hacks and two guns at a time. It also doesn’t make sense to throw them away if you find better ones since you can fuse existing ones to make better versions. These better versions are not that much better, they give you more ammo in the clip or lower cool down times but you need to find a lot of them to make them worthwhile. That’s all there is to the solo gameplay.

While playing as a squad on the other hand two more elements come into play: the first is “pinging” where you can mark items or enemies and the second is restored. Hopefully no one here needs to be explained marking so I’m going straight to restoring. If a teammate dies they become a ghost, while being a ghost they can still ping enemies and items for the rest of the team. If they find a restore point which generates where enemies die, they can be brought back into the fight by a teammate. I like this feature over other games since you don’t lay around like a cheap member of the red-light district while still contributing to your team.

Conclusion:

A beautiful map and some new features to the battle royal formula isn’t enough for Hyper Scape to grab my attention. It is a grind fest to unlock rewards, the movement is nothing new, the weapons aren’t balanced enough and there could be a better way to get on top of buildings.

This would get a 6/10 for me but since the lag is a killer, the sound feels reused and an open beta with a store selling cosmetic items makes this 5/10 simply because no car, plane or any company would try to sell you add-ons for an incomplete product.

Pros	Cons
Great and varied world	Average Movement
Great decay effects	Overall average graphics
Enjoyable sound in loading screens	Poor sound effects
Decent weapon range	Most weapons need upgrades to kill
Great support mechanic for dead players	Boring standard gameplay