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. You can still play this version of Hyper Scape for now, but come April 28, Ubisoft is shutting it down.My favorite battle royale is dead. These updates soon became less frequent, however, with the last update, version 3.1, arriving all the way back in April of last year.
Various updates brought additional seasons and content drops as development continued. It eventually came to consoles too, but not in time or with enough enthusiasm surrounding it for it to enter the zeitgeist. Hyper Scape’s quiet life began as a cross between EA’s Apex Legends and Epic Games’ Fortnite, featuring chaotic, vertical gameplay set in a vibrant sci-fi world. “We will be taking key learnings from this game into future products.” “We set out to create a vertical, close-quarters, and fast-paced shooter experience and we are extremely grateful to our community for joining us on our journey,” stated the Hyper Scape team. Though it failed to gain enough momentum, the publisher thanks those who joined the ride while it lasted. Hyper Scape launched not even two years ago as Ubisoft’s shot at entering the battle royale space. The publisher announced plans to shutter the game today, marking April 28 as the day it’s finally laid to rest. The free-to-play Ubisoft battle royale shooter, Hyper Scape, is shutting down.