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Hey Ubisoft, u/UbiMorning
Who I am: I’m generic casual man. I play almost 100 different games a year on average, own all 3 consoles, even play mobile games. I download and try most games available and although I rarely play games to obsessive levels in a short amount of time, I am the more rare player who rarely deletes games and periodically bounces back in every few months once the buzz dies down to see how the game is doing.
Battle Royale is the genre that despite playing pretty much every iteration available on consoles, I’ve never been obsessively hooked like the people who have hundreds-thousands of hours in PUBG/Fortnite. I’m more of an arcade shooter fan like Halo (Platinum/Onyx), Gears (Silver), Paladins (Gold). I’m also not adverse to spending money in F2P games so I’m probably part of the wider demographic who will play the new thing then eventually move on as I have no desire to be competitive.
So far I have no wins but have came third and my most eliminations is 5, all in solo matches.
First impression: Hyper Scape is interesting as I enjoyed Realm Royale’s hero shooter ideas of having abilities but combining that with the movement and gunplay sensibility of a Quake/Titanfall/Halo is something is very appealing to me. On that basic front, I feel Hyper Scape succeeds in its primary design goal. It truly does feel like an arena-shooter in a Battle Royale where it’s frantic enough but precise enough to feel the high skill ceiling that is missing in a lot of games today.
The art style: The map feels very Assassin’s Creed inspired where the futuristic elements feel practically sterile. On the performance side, it runs excellently on One X but every sector of the map looks and feels the same.
It makes navigation difficult as it’s hard to recognise landmarks at a glance besides the bigger sections like Red Tiger and that church that’s definitely not from AC Unity. I’d hope that as time goes on the city gets some more personality to help sectors feel distinctive but I do admit this might resolve in time for dedicated players that want to be familiar with every aspect of the game. My suggestion is to add a mini-map to help players get an instant understanding of the geometry when on the move. Using the map screen feels like a death sentence when playing solo.
The weapon designs all look pretty cool and visually the skills look cool as well. I hope the skins coming have more flair than simply “futuristic pixels, neo-cyberpunk”.
Movement: There’s a lot of debate on aim acceleration so I don’t want to detract from that. There’s probably people a lot more sensitive and educated to it than I am. What I can vouch for is that the default sensitivities on controller are way too high. I’m fine with faster games like Titanfall or CoD but these defaults remind of of Unreal Championship on OGX. I toned it down 5 each on each on regular sensitivities and down to 35 of ADS sensitivities and it felt more natural there. Probably not perfect but I didn’t feel out of control.
Movement speed and agility is fantastic and definitely feels reminiscent of Titanfall or Halo 5 or Quake 3 (to a degree). Running, jumping, slamming, climbing all feels incredibly smooth. I did wonder why you couldn’t run vertically up a wall a few steps to climb into windows you miss but it didn’t feel vital.
The slam move feels very dominating to flee conflicts in conjunction with the rest of the base movement kit. I get the feeling it could become a must have pick due to how hard it makes you to hit.
Weapons: I’m not going to give a deep breakdown of every weapon, again there’s more skilled players who will argue why the hexfire should do X over Y. All I can do is talk about weapon feel.
On console, the fast vertical movement makes rapid fire guns or AoE weapons like the grenade launcher much stronger picks for the rank and file players like myself. The hexfire seems very strong for casual players but I don’t think it’s OP. Skilled players can wreck me with the Ripper, Mammoth, Riot.
The Dragonfly, D-tap and Komodo all feel rather weak so far as the fast movement makes landing shots more difficult and headshots with the Dragonfly don’t feel strong enough to reward the accuracy. D-tap feels far too weak despite the auto-lock on and clear influence from Titanfall’s auto pistol.
Hacks: These are a lot of fun. Slam feels the most useful due to its utility for movement. Ball is quite goofy but the trade off of high mobility but you’re a big target feels fair. Wall, heal, mine and shockwave all feel useful but more situational for teams rather than solo play.
Invisibility and invulnerability are strong crutches to have if you don’t have slam to escape a situation but I wonder if they, along with teleport might become frustrating for players who just want a few kills to feel satisfied. You know the complaint in Fortnite of you breath on a guy and they build a skyscraper and how that’s annoying? These hacks have the potential to feel like that eventually if they aren’t closely monitored and kept rare enough where not everybody has it easily.
Maybe I’m wrong but Reveal doesn’t feel useful due to how busy the screen is. I’ve used it when I know exactly where somebody is and I still couldn’t tell you how it highlights the enemy. Whatever the effect used is, it seems really subtle to my untrained eye.
Fusion/Upgrades: I like this mechanic a lot. Rather than chasing colour tiers of weapons I want, I can find duplicates and it makes the excessive amount of loot remain valuable even in late game. Very clever and I have no complaints with the fundamental concept.
Events: As somebody who doesn’t care about Twitch, these streamer tools mean nothing to me. The events that take place don’t have enough of an influence on the match to feel significant. They’re quite short as well, so I basically ignore them. The concept doesn’t bother me but it’s a shrug as of right now.
Conclusion: I’m enjoying Hyper Scape more than I expected. It’s not converted me into finally loving the genre but I’m having fun playing solo. Don’t expect me to hit level 100 in the battle pass or to watch on Twitch but do know that I will be playing every now and again and it feels like it will be a fun way to spend the day.
Selfishly, I wish you’d make more organised modes like 6v6/12v12 TDM on proper arena maps so I can finally have a Quake-like experience on console again but I respect that BR is the intended goal in the long run.
Being a long time Ubisoft fan, I was there during the evolution of: Siege, For Honor, Division 1/2, The Crew. So I’m confident that you’re going to be dedicated to the long term development of the game as I’ve seen these games grow far beyond what I ever anticipated. That is what will keep the game installed in the long run as I know that season 3 will be completely different to season 1, then year 2 to year 1 will be crazy. I hope the community allows you the opportunity to experiment and expand, as the foundations laid out are really solid.
If you read this far, thanks for your time band I hope at least some of it was useful.
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