Anthem

Following the underwhelming release of Mass Effect: Andromeda, fans were expecting a redemption arc from developer Bioware with Anthem. The game looked really promising with all the markings of a great action-adventure game, but the final product was anything but. A rushed development cycle and poor management from higher-ups meant that much of the game’s creative parts were crushed under the weight of business decisions, and Anthem ultimately became a massive flop. There were plans to revive the game under the Anthem NEXT banner, but those efforts were also canned due to growing costs.

Skull and Bones

Skull and Bones was the developer’s effort to translate its adrenaline-pumping naval combat gameplay mechanics into a live service format. The game spent years and years in development hell, surviving multiple changes and differing creative directions before finally releasing just a few days ago. And suffice to say, the reception has been poor. It might be too early to call the verdict on this one, but the chance of Skulls and Bones’ sinking ship reaching the shores of live service success is looking pretty slim at the moment.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

When Rocksteady announced Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, it felt like a natural evolution of the ideas we saw in the Batman: Arkham games. The prospect of playing as the anti-villains and engaging with the game over the long term was pretty tantalizing, but the first look at the uninspired gameplay more or less set the course for what was ultimately going to be a trainwreck. And to not much surprise, Suicide Squad also launched recently, and most fans have already lost interest in the game just a couple of weeks after launch.

Marvel’s Avengers

A live service game that lets you play as some of the most famous superheroes on the planet would be a formula ripe for success, right? Well, that’s what the developer thought when it laid down the blueprint for what would ultimately become Marvel’s Avengers. The live service elements felt shoehorned into the final product, and a lack of engaging endgame portion and grindy progression mechanics didn’t really help either. And to top it all off, the game released in an extremely buggy state making it one of the biggest flops in recent memory. While the developer did make some effort in turning it around into a success with post-launch DLC, it eventually became clear that many of its biggest problems were rooted in the foundational elements of the game and that wasn’t really something they could repair with a finished product.

Knockout City

Knockout City was a really fun multiplayer game with an interesting art direction and unique mechanics, and developer Velan Studios was able to accrue a sizable player base through those aspects. But player interest, unfortunately, waned over time due to a variety of reasons, and the developer started to withdraw support with falling player counts – resulting in a slow death of this once-promising multiplayer IP.

Hyper Scape

Yet another developer trying to capitalize on the battle royale hype train with Hyper Scape, a game that combines fast and fluid movement mechanics with unique features that were specifically catered towards streamers. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with Hyper Scape’s set of mechanics, and it did gain some success on an initial level but the game just wasn’t able to sustain that success in the long run.

Evolve

Evolve was one of the first games in the asymmetrical multiplayer space, and developer Turtle Rock Studios’ title had quite a number of fans waiting with bated breath for its release. It had some fun ideas going for it, but the developer failed to capitalize on the potential with underwhelming DLC content. The idea of killing fantastically designed monsters in a eerie atmosphere certainly was a great idea on paper but the execution left much to be desired.

Foamstars

Foamstars was a decent attempt at cashing on the popularity of Splatoon’s gooey splatterfest mechanics and taking those concepts to a new platform, but a rough execution meant that much of the potential therein was put to waste. Foamstars does have a few good things going for it, but the lack of engaging content and uninteresting progression mechanics give players more than enough reason to not be in it for the long run. Player counts haven’t been the best as of late, and Foamstars is looking to be on a downward spiral just a couple of weeks after launch.

Lawbreakers

Lawbreakers was an interesting attempt at creating a hero-based first-person shooter, and while some of its ideas could be traced back to Overwatch – Lawbreakers was anything but a ripoff. There were plenty of reasons why Lawbreakers never got the love that it deserves which range from poor marketing to uninspired art direction and high skill requirements among others. There was a dedicated group of players who enjoyed what Lawbreakers had to offer, but that group wasn’t nearly enough to sustain the game’s continuous development and maintenance costs – eventually leading to servers being shut down.

Radical Heights

The insane success of Fortnite caused a lot of developers to quickly rush into the battle royale genre and grab a piece of this newly discovered pie, and developer Boss Key Productions’ Radical Heights was one of those shameless attempts. It was a game that could barely pass off as a minimum viable product, and the fact that it lacked any sort of creativity meant that it was dead as soon as it launched.

Paragon

Epic Games tried to capture the lucrative MOBA market with Paragon, but failed to create much impact in the long term. The game managed to earn some faithful players when its early access version was first released in 2016, but complaints regarding its mechanics and quirks weren’t addressed in a feasible manner. There was a very clear distinction between the direction that the developers took with Paragon and what players wanted out of it, and with no common ground achieved – player counts trickled down and developers started to withdraw support, eventually causing servers to shut down.

Red Dead Online

Red Dead Redemption 2 is an undisputed masterpiece, and it continues to stand as a towering achievement for storytelling in video games. It’s pretty sad then that the online component of the game can’t be praised on a similar level, and a lot of that could be blamed on the developer’s inability to drop meaningful content updates to keep players hooked in the long run. The runaway success of Grand Theft Auto 5’s online component meant that RDO was mostly kept on life support, and that eventually led to player counts dropping and it ultimately turned out to be a failure.

Rocket Arena

Rocket Arena was yet another attempt by EA to cash in on the popularity of gaming trends, and the developer tried to take on the team-based mayhem of Overwatch with a few tricks up its own sleeve. Rocket Arena had somewhat of an interesting art style and compelling mechanics, but it also had an equal share of glaring issues ranging from game balance to progression and lack of content among others. Players quickly lost interest in the game soon after its release, causing a premature end to what could have been a promising IP.

Battlefield 2042

Battlefield 2042 was an ambitious project that tried to turn its multiplayer model into a live service format, but a less-than-stellar execution plan made it one of the biggest failures that the long-running genre has seen to date. A missing single-player campaign, basic communication features, and a general lack of content are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Battlefield 2042’s buffet of problems – and players quickly took note. Sales were obviously much lower than projected numbers, and those who did get into the game didn’t stick around for much longer.

The Culling

The Culling is yet another attempt by a developer to capitalize on the battle royale hype, but developer Xaviant Games clearly put out the game well before it was even ready. It suffered from a bevy of issues ranging from technical inefficiencies to half-baked mechanics and much more. It was a laughing stock of a game, and it continues to serve as an example for developers to not blindly rush towards hot trends.

And after almost a year and a half, Ubisoft has now announced that Hyper Scape will be shutting down from April 28th. Announced via the company’s official website, the publisher does not mention the reason for pulling the plug on the game. However, they do say that they were thankful to the community for their support.

Ubisoft wrote: “We have made the difficult decision to end development of Hyper Scape and shut the game down as of April 28th. 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. We will be taking key learnings from this game into future products.

“To the Hyper Scape community, thank you for your passion and dedication to the world of Neo Arcadia both inside and outside of the game. Your devotion to the game we built will always be cherished.”

It can be said that Hyper Scape had potential, but was released at the wrong time, and not supported the way it should have been. Either way, the fact that it’s shutting down is unfortunate. Hopefully, we get some more news from the development team about a new game in the near future.

The initial backlash was against the game’s punk rock, mosh-pit aesthetic with lots of colorful graffiti, particularly in trying to pass it off as fitting for Tom Clancy’s genre of espionage thrillers. There was those who hated that Splinter Cell and Sam Fisher still hadn’t received a proper sequel while others looked at XDefiant as a cash-grab, attempting to cash in on the hero shooter trend (but leaning closer to Valorant in terms of realistic guns). To be fair, the game hasn’t received a release date and will have a series of closed technical tests first before its full launch. It could very well end up being a fun game, even if it doesn’t seem to break any boundaries or innovate on its own.

So instead, I’d like to examine the necessity of something like Tom Clancy’s XDefiant. Immediately, one could argue that an idea like this makes sense. In the hero shooter genre, even a game like Overwatch which hasn’t had any huge updates or new heroes in more than a year saw 10 million new players joining in 2020. In its first year, Valorant hit 14 million players and even managed to beat out Valve’s Counter-Strike: GO in revenue earned this past January. Even Rainbow Six Siege, which mixes tactical shooting with more grounded heroes and abilities, is still popular with over 75 million players as of July 2021.

From the outset, having a 6v6 shooter with realistic gunplay and abilities but with faster-paced action like Call of Duty isn’t the worst idea (especially if it’s free to play). It could serve as another strong revenue stream for the company which hasn’t made a huge push into the competitive FPS market outside of Siege. The fact that it’s only coming to Ubisoft Connect and not the Epic Games Store, at least initially, shows that Ubisoft wants full returns on revenue from the outset. It even has recognizable properties like Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and The Division. Surely it should appeal to fans of those franchises!

It’s important to note a few things though. Just because a hero shooter like Overwatch was a huge success doesn’t mean that every other imitator fared just as well. Paladins, Lawbreakers, Battleborn, Rocket Arena, Dirty Bomb, Quake Champions – the list of failures and/or failing titles over the years is pretty significant. Granted, they all didn’t have the marketing might of Activision Blizzard or even a Ubisoft behind them. Surely even a big-name publisher could make a new IP with new characters a success. Just look at Apex Legends.

But with context, it’s clear that the success of Apex wasn’t simply a case of “published by EA.” In fact, you could argue that in a market crowded with other battle royale titles, including big names like Fortnite, that Respawn Entertainment was taking a risk (especially when its Titanfall titles weren’t exactly the biggest successes). Nevertheless, taking a risk and simply dropping the title on players while offering excellent gameplay, revolutionary new features like the pinging system, and an overall strong level of polish helped it stand out. Even when player numbers and engagement dropped, Respawn adapted well and put out compelling updates and worthwhile new features, despite some of its monetization practices like Heirloom Items being less than savory.

On the other hand, look at Hyper Scape, Ubisoft’s own battle royale title. It followed many of the same tenets as Apex Legends – a stealth release, a huge marketing campaign that saw numerous high-profile streamers gaining access and bumping up the numbers on Twitch thus generating tons of buzz, you name it. Despite all of that, Hyper Scape quickly floundered and within just a few months, Ubisoft confirmed that it had already failed to meet expectations. Cue the usual overhaul of the gameplay and systems which have failed to really spark interest since then. No amount of new content, changes and “listening to feedback” has proven capable of salvaging the game. You could blame this on the gameplay and polish not being the best or the fact that its competitors are leagues ahead and dominate a fair share of the market already.

Then there’s Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad, a mobile RPG that interestingly featured a crossover of several Ubisoft properties like Ghost Recon, The Division and Rainbow Six Siege. Clearly meant to cash in on the success of games like RAID: Shadow Legends, its servers are set to shut down on October 4^th. Unlike Hyper Scape, it didn’t make a huge social media splash. Instead, it was criticized heavily for being little more than a cash grab and then laid low before dying out.

It’s not like Ubisoft always fails when it comes to chasing trends. Brawlhalla is a great example – as a 2D fighting game with gameplay akin to Super Smash Bros., it’s garnered over 50 million players as of March 2021. There’s even an esports scene with a prize pool of over $200,000 and it still receives significant updates to this day, even if it’s not commanding the spotlight at Ubisoft Forward events and the like. But again, context is important – how many Smash Bros.-like titles were available on the PC platform before Brawlhalla came along? It may have been difficult to measure the audience for the same but the game’s success can’t be denied even with fairly minimal competition from better games like Rivals of Aether.

XDefiant isn’t nearly as lucky, having to go up against more established franchises that have way more entrenched followings (not to mention its own Rainbow Six Siege). It’s clear that Ubisoft is trying to cater to fans of each title by offering similar looking maps – with two being shot-for-shot remakes of areas from The Division series – and characters with familiar abilities. Also, unlike Hyper Scape, it seems to be spending a significant amount of time in closed beta testing first with a release window yet to be hinted at. Again, it doesn’t mean much if the core gameplay isn’t solid but that’s something that only be ascertained once more time has been spent playing it.

At the end of the day, you could argue just as much for the necessity of a new free-to-play competitive shooter as you could against it. It’s always nice to have more choices and competition that can push other titles to try new things and stand out. But does Tom Clancy’s XDefiant actually possess its own unique identity to help it stand out in the crowd? Is it going to be another try-and-forget shooter that pushes microtransactions and battle passes, floundering in its initial release and prompting commitments to improve before either steadily finding its own niche, becoming a massive success or just slowly fading away? Strong marketing and a mosh-pit aesthetic that preaches defiance – masking the fact that the primary cast doesn’t have any real distinct characters or identities at this point – can only get you so far and even if XDefiant has its own unique take on the genre, it may be a case of “too little, too late.”

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

On October 29, to coincide with the upcoming launch of Watch Dogs: Legion, Ubisoft will launch Ubisoft Connect, a new ecosystem that will bring all of Uplay and Ubisoft Club together in one single place. Other than that, Ubisoft Connect will also bring with it a few more features that Ubisoft seems to be committing to for the future.

The most crucial of these is cross-platform progression. “Designed for the next generation of gaming and beyond, Ubisoft Connect is just the beginning of Ubisoft’s commitment to making cross-platform features standard in the future,” Ubisoft writes.

Cross-platform progression will be added to future releases, starting with the likes of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Immortals Fenyx Rising, and Riders Republic (upcoming games such as Far Cry 6 and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake aren’t mentioned, so it’s unknown whether they will feature cross-progression as well).

Regardless of whether you’re playing these games on PlayStation or Xbox or PC or Stadia (or Switch, if the game is on it), your progress will be shared across all platforms, as long as your Ubisoft Connect account is linked to the game.

Similarly, cross-platform play will also be supported in most upcoming Ubisoft games with multiplayer.

Ubisoft has mentioned that cross-play and cross-progression will be added in select games, so going forward, whether not these are supported in releases is something we’ll likely find out on a case-by-case basis.

The battle royale genre has moved from strength to strength these past few years, and has seen all the major publishers in the industry trying to claim a slice of the pie with their own take on the popular style of game. Recently, Ubisoft threw their own sci-fi-styled hat into the ring with Hyper Scape, which went into beta in July, and then launched in full just a month later.

Its launch, however, didn’t exactly go number. No matter what mtric you go by – whether that’s audience reception, critical reception, Twitch numbers, or anything else – the game has faded away into the background rather quickly- and its developers agree that things could have gone much better.

In a new update, Ubisoft said with Hyper Scape, they “were not able to achieve the high expectations we set for ourselves with our full release.” Going forward, they want to turn the shooter into a game “everyone can play and enjoy”, and as such, have identified five key improvements that they want to make, from making the game more accessible to adding more game modes to enabling cross-play and more. Read about those below, in their own words:

• COMBAT COMFORT We always intended for Hyper Scape to have a high skill ceiling, but it is clear from our data that the floor is also too high. This results in a difficult experience for new players. Currently, it is too hard to aim, track and consistently damage players and eliminate them, especially on consoles.
• ONBOARDING The game does not currently provide enough time and opportunities for new players to learn and succeed. We need to protect newcomers and provide training activities to help them become proficient with the game.
• GAME MODES Our core game mode, Crown Rush, can be quite unforgiving, so we want to provide players with a variety of formats in terms of activity and match size. This will start with introducing respawn systems in the game and “deathmatch” style game modes. We are also rethinking how we manage limited time modes and the player base split that is required to support multiple modes at once.
• PLAYER GOALS Currently, there are not enough medium and long-term goals for players to stick around in the Hyper Scape. We are introducing first version of our Player Ranking system in Season 2, and we will bring more progression systems and match-to-match flow improvements as well.
• CROSS PLAY While Cross Play has always been intended for the game, we want to add it earlier than planned to help address the current issues of lobby size.

Regardless of how invested (or not) you may be in Hyper Scape and how it does, it’s good to see a developer recognizing their game’s flaws so quickly and then actually being able to work on them. Here’s hoping this actually leads to some meaningful improvements in the not-too-distant future.

Hyper Scape is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You can read our review of the game through here.

Following a report leaking the same, Ubisoft has confirmed that the next Ubisoft Forward stream will take place on September 10th. It’s slated for 12 PM PDT with the pre-show starting at 11 AM PDT. Check out the trailer below for a quick look at the games that will be showcased.

Some of them have already been announced, like Watch Dogs: Legion or Sam Fisher aka Zero being in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. The real big reveal could be Gods and Monsters, which has reportedly been renamed to Immortals: Fenyx Rising. This will likely be the first gameplay showcase for the open world mythological action adventure.

This will be the second Ubisoft Forward that the company is hosting after the last took place in July (with many other scandals having cropped up since then). Like before, viewers can earn in-game rewards from tuning in, though these have yet to be detailed. Stay tuned for more details and maybe even a sale on Ubisoft titles in the coming days.

For the first few hours, Hyper Scape won me over. There’s a lot of charm to this game, and it manages to coast by on it for the first few hours. The game opens with a beautifully animated cutscene that introduces you to the game’s setting. The cutscene is full of energy, with hints of sarcastic humor that help ramp up the charm. That charm continues throughout the visual design of the game. The characters are colorful and expressive. That color carries on in the rest of the game, which has a bright and vibrant color palette that makes the game a pleasure on the eyes. Even the representation of the map shrinking is cool to watch. Since technically you’re supposed to be playing an in-universe game, the map shrinks by showing zones slowly pixelate and de-render. It’s a cool effect, and looks more interesting than yet another mysterious cloud closing in on the players. It also means that, instead of always closing in a circle pattern, the map can segment into several distinct chunks. This makes it look different every single playthrough.

"But after a couple of hours, the holes in the foundation start to appear, and by the end of my time with Hyper Scape, the game’s glaring flaws had become all to apparent."

After watching the intro cutscene, you’re spawned into a training area, where you’re familiarized with the game’s mechanics. Most of them are pretty standard; you spawn in with nothing but a melee weapon, and have to find guns and abilities scattered across the map. The abilities, called hacks, are meant to augment your current abilities. They tend to be highly mobile though; even the offensive ones, like the slam attack, give you a significant boost to your maneuverability. This usually comes in the form of a dash forward or a huge leap into the air. All of your weapons and hacks can be upgraded by picking up duplicate spawns of them in the world.

On paper, this sounds like a great recipe for a fun, exciting, and fast paced shooter. And for the first couple of hours, it really feels that way. The game is extremely fast. You move fast, and the hacks give you constant boosts to your movement that keep you going at top speeds the entire time. A simple climbing mechanic makes verticality a key aspect of the game. Meanwhile, a large variety of guns help keep your loadouts feeling varied. For the first few hours, the recipe seems to be a success. I had a lot of fun dashing and sliding and leaping across the map. It felt cool, it felt fresh. It was a lot of fun at first.

But after a couple of hours, the holes in the foundation start to appear, and by the end of my time with Hyper Scape, the game’s glaring flaws had become all to apparent. The core issue with the game can be boiled down to one massive flaw; time to kill. For the uninitiated, time to kill is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s a reference to how long you have to shoot an enemy player before you get the kill. Most fast paced games like this have a quick time to kill. They need to, because the high speed and mobility makes it rare to have an enemy in your sights for very long. And this is Hyper Scape’s glaring issue. It has a ridiculously long time to kill, far too long for a game that moves this fast and has this much mobility. Getting a single kill can become a long, drawn out affair. Oftentimes, you wind up having to chase a single target across the entire map, wasting precious seconds and even minutes of the match, because it’s simply impossible to put enough bullets on them before they leap, slide, or teleport away from you.

"The high mobility even hampers many of the abilities in the game, making only a few of them worth using."

I did some testing of the gun mechanics in the training zone, which can be accessed at any time from the game’s hub. Nearly every weapon in the game requires close to half of their magazine capacity to score a kill. Even the shotgun, which is one of the worst I’ve seen in a modern FPS, requires two or more shots to kill. In a game as fast as this, that makes it a functionally worthless weapon. Most weapons don’t get damage upgrades until the final upgrade tier. This makes upgrades feel essentially useless, unless you luck into getting the max upgrade. At that point, you will win any duel with a lower tier version of the same gun, with pretty much no exceptions.

Most of the explosive weapons, meanwhile, do far too little damage and have far too slow projectile speeds to be worth much of anything in combat. There’s one in particular, a single shot explosive cannon, that requires three or more hits to score a kill. But being a single shot weapon means you’re constantly reloading. Combined with the extreme speed and maneuverability of players, and you end up with a gun that won’t kill much of anything at all. This makes the handful of guns with the highest damage and highest accuracy the only guns that are really worth using at all.

The insane time to kill also promotes a brutal team shot meta, where it’s almost impossible to win an encounter where you’re outnumbered by your opponents. Since your own time to kill is so slow, you’ll almost never be able to kill one of your enemies before they simple gang up on you and melt your health down. It results in game that, on paper, has a lot of room for tactical positioning and strategy. Unfortunately, in practice, the game ultimately boils down to lucky drops and pure twitch reflexes.

The high mobility even hampers many of the abilities in the game, making only a few of them worth using. The wall power-up is easily navigated around. The ability that spots enemies on the map for you is generally outdated by the time you even use it, because the enemies move so fast that they’re usually somewhere else entirely. Meanwhile, the slam ability dominates everything, as it gives you a massive leap into the air and deals damage when you land. The game’s high mobility and slow kill times work against each other, creating an environment where only a few guns and abilities actually feel worth using.

"With some patches to make time to kill faster, and to better balance the weapons and abilities, Hyper Scape could become an enjoyable experience."

It’s a major shame, too, because there is a good game hiding under these problems. A highly mobile battle royale has the potential to be a lot of fun. The movement is fluid, and the abilities are legitimately fun to use. But they overpower the weapons so aggressively that it takes away any real feeling of skill or strategy from the game.

It boils the whole experience down to a matter of who found the submachine gun, easily one of the best weapons in the game, and turns most gunfights into drawn out chases that end in you turning a corner and unceremoniously dying. With some patches to make time to kill faster, and to better balance the weapons and abilities, Hyper Scape could become an enjoyable experience. But here in season one, it’s a disappointment, one with a lot of potential but deeply flawed execution. It’s possible to have some fun here. But I’d recommend waiting a season or two and seeing if the game gets the patches it needs.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox One.

Unlike many battle royale titles, you don’t need to kill everyone to win in Hyper Scape. Instead, you can go for the Crown and secure a victory that way. The catch is that once the Crown is in your possession, you need to hold it for 45 seconds. The problem is that your location is revealed to everyone nearby.

Running is the obvious best option so find any skills like Teleportation that can aid this. Slam is also good since it transports you somewhere else for a set period of time. Use both abilities to continuously escape foes and you should emerge victorious. Just try not to stand your ground and fight everyone off.

Recommended Weapons

While favorite weapons boil down to one’s individual play-style and preference, the best weapons have a habit of emerging faster than usual in battle royale titles. Hyper Scape is no different, and has the added element of each gun “ranking up” by picking up duplicates and “fusing them.” Let’s break down some of the better weapons and their current usefulness. Things could change with subsequent patches to take note.

• Hexfire – A pretty forgiving weapon for new players, the Hexfire’s magazine size starts at 150 and can go all the way up to 270 at level 5. Its damage leaves a bit to be desired, especially when not hitting head shots, but the high rate of fire and sheer amount of ammo makes up for it. Spray and somewhat pray as they say.
• D-Tap – If you’re not too proficient at aiming, the D-Tap is a worthy sidearm to have. Its bullets will auto-track enemies within vision range when aiming down sights. The downside is that you can’t hit head shots and damage remains at 5 per shot from rank 1 to 4. At the very least, it has a maximum magazine size of 23 and makes for a decent finishing weapon.
• Mammoth – Your standard pump-action shotgun – get up close and shred enemies. Head shot damage is 105 from rank 1 to 4 and hits 120 at level 5 while body shot damage is 75 at rank 1 to 4 and 105 at rank 5. The magazine size is also pretty good, starting at 5 and going up to 9 at rank 5. Whenever you’re clearing rooms, the Mammoth is the weapon to have.
• Skybreaker – A weird weapon by multiplayer shooter standard, the Skybreaker essentially fires a single lightning orb that deals area-of-effect damage to those who get too close. It’s not the best weapon to rock solo and even when dealing with groups, you’re better off using it to provide support for teammates with more consistent damage. It’s a little too situational, especially in a very movement-heavy game like this where opponents won’t typically clump up, but deals some good damage at higher ranks.
• Komodo – Designated as a “plasma blast launcher”, the Komodo is slow-firing and deals area of effect damage. Though it can’t head shot, the damage is pretty good at 29 per shot at rank 1 to 4 and 34 at rank 5. Its range was dialed down over time but as a mid-range weapon, it’s pretty decent. Consider using it in close-quarters as well if the other person doesn’t have a Mammoth – there’s no escape from the AoE damage in that scenario.
• Ripper – Your bog-standard assault rifle, the Ripper outputs 11 body/16 head shot damage per shot from rank 1 to 4 and 13 body/18 head shot damage per shot at level 5. The magazine size starts at 24 and caps out at 36. Overall, it’s a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none style weapon that should get you through most situations.
• Protocol-V – The sniper’s choice, the Protocol-V deals 50 body shot damage and 75 head shot damage at rank 1, going up to 80 body shot damage and 120 head shot damage at rank 5. The downsides are its magazine size, which only provides three shots at all ranks, and the relative speed of the game. When you’re dealing with fast-moving players using hacks and dipping in and out, it can be tough to land those shots. Nevertheless, for those who prefer long-distance engagements, the Protocol-V is worth checking out.
• Salvo-EPL – A grenade launcher with a decent magazine size that makes up for its relatively decent damage, the Salvo-EPL can be handy for projectile DPS players if the get the timing down. With 25 damage at rank 1 to 4 and 31 damage at rank 5, this is a perfectly serviceable, if unexceptional, choice.
• Harpy – Though it falls off at longer ranges, the Harpy is absolutely worthwhile for mid to close-range fights. It hits for 7 body shot damage and 10 head shot damage at rank 1 which goes up to 8 body shot damage and 12 head shot damage at rank 4. This is made up for by the high rate of fire and quick reload speed, allowing you to shred enemies quickly. If that weren’t enough, there’s no additional spread penalty when sprinting or jumping, allowing one to stay on the move while raining down fire.

Ubisoft’s sci-fi free to play battle royale shooter Hyper Scape was announced out of the blue earlier this month, and entered open beta on PC shortly afterward, with Ubisoft saying that the game would launch in full and also come to consoles this Summer. Now, they’ve provided an exact date for when that will be happening.

In a new trailer detailing the full launch of Hyper Scape’s first season, Ubisoft have confirmed that the shooter will be launching in full on PC and also coming to PS4 and Xbox One on August 11. When it does, it will also be adding a new weapon called Dragonfly, and a new Hack called Magnet. Season 1 – called “The First Principle” – will also kick off the game’s ongoing narrative, which you can follow by reading the in-game comics, and by tracking down a new Memory Shard on the game’s map every week.

New limited time game modes are also being added, while new events will also be coming up. Meanwhile, free and premium versions of the game’s battle pass have also been confirmed, with the latter being a 100-tier one as opposed to the the 30-tier battle pass during the beta period.

Hyper Scape is currently in open beta on PC until August 2. It’ll be interesting to see if the game launches on the PS5 and Xbox Series X later this year (it probably will, especially if it’s successful), but Ubisoft haven’t said anything about that yet.

When it comes right down to it, everyone wants a piece of that battle royale pie, and Ubisoft is no exception. Their latest jump into the genre is Hyper Scape. The game has a pretty interesting setting of a sort of game within a game, where people play through the Hyper Scape to either escape the harsh realities of a terrible near-future, or to win fame and fortune (you can check out the cinematic reveal trailer through here). Many battle royale shooters have come and gone, so it remains to be seen where this attempt will land, but it seems they’re going to try a lot of things to keep in the mindset.

Today, Ubisoft revealed that the game will get a new mode called Hack Runner. This mode will provide a new challenge for you as your hacks are randomized every two minutes, meaning you have to learn on the fly and brings a new set of chaos to the battle. You can check out the trailer for it below.

Hyper Scape is available now and free to play on PC. Hack Runner will go live on July 28th.