One of the most important aspects of the game was running away at the last second, something few other games even let players get away with.Īnother highlight of the game’s heyday was the variety and quality of cosmetics, as well as the fact that there was no advantage or disadvantage to any one of them. Because of the speed of the characters and the intensely unimpeding map design, doubling back, direction changes, and long exciting chases were an essential feature of every game, one that left players’ hands trembling, whether they were the ones chasing or being chased. In Hyper Scape, hiding was one option, but it was always better to run. What I dislike about that, as well as the slow movement under fire of most characters, is that it makes individual skill less important in favor of group coordination, appealing to casual players while alienating those who like to show off. Apex ’s high time to kill is due to the large health reserves of characters, and this makes for battles of attrition, especially late game. That is: you slow down when you take damage, and the time to kill (a measure of how quickly it is possible to kill someone) is extremely long.
Apex Legends, which is the next fastest-paced battle royale, has two features that slow the game down, both of which are my primary peeves with it. From teleportation and giant leaps, to walls or bouncy balls like Mei or Hammond in Overwatch, to double jumps and well-placed objects that made for intuitive parkour, the game was pure movement. You were likely to travel as much in elevation as in latitude, if not more, throughout a match. That is, the game was fully three-dimensional. Its differentiating factor (because every battle royale has one, and only one, of those) was its verticality. Other than some notable imbalances in gameplay (aim assist, the hexfire weapon being overpowered on console, close quarters making some ranged weapons useless), Hyper Scape was shaping up to be one of the most interesting battle royales ever. The gameplay, during its brief peak, was wild. Sure, it hurt my eyes to look at the game for more than three hours straight, but that’s my fault for having weak eyes.
It’s like a game designer was given five gallons of Dunkin’ coffee (no milk, no sugar), no sleep for three weeks, VHS tapes of Tron, and the unabridged Ready Player One book. If you said Hyper Scape sounds like something a four year old in the world of Ready Player One might like, you would be absolutely right. Then, the best battle royale you’ve never heard of, Hyper Scape, was released. The gameplay of a modern battle royale is predictable, two-dimensional, and has too much luck involved for my taste. Other than Fortnite ’s building mechanics, and Apex ’s MOBA-like (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) Legends (in-game characters), or the brief popularity of Fall Guys ’ game-show-esque format, the genre has sort of stagnated. However, the market has become saturated and predictable. In fact, if you count the real original battle royale-the Minecraft servers that ran survival games-then this genre has been around for a decade now. And then it wasn’t.īattle royale games are ubiquitous, and have been for the past five years, since the immense popularity of Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) in late 2017. In its early days, everyone was learning, so it was a constant fight to improve the fastest day by day. Yet, these abilities were simple and easy to learn, and the pace of the gameplay, while manically fast, felt rewarding. It was faster than Apex Legends, had more intuitive building mechanics than Fortnite, and had swappable abilities that allowed players to creatively change playstyle mid game. It died, officially, on January 27th 2022, at 5:00 EST, when Ubisoft announced that it would be shut down on April 28th.
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