Of course, you can hop into Hyper Scape’s open beta right now. But if you want those new goodies, you’ll have to stick around ’til August 11th for the game’s “official” launch and Season One debut.
Annoyingly, we don’t really get any more on the specifics of what Season One will bring. There’s a new gun, a new hack (I’ll get to those), and the customary battle-pass required by all free-to-play games these days. Like most, it’ll feature 100 tiers of cosmetic goodies to unlock, and will likely be split into “paid” and “free” tiers. Season One also kicks off a series of limited-time modes - though what they entail is also being kept secret ’till launch. Matt was quite taken by Hyper Scape as an almost Quake-like take on battle royale. More than the supernatural respawn mechanics or shrinking the map in chunks instead of circles, however, was his affection for the game’s hacks - abilities picked up and upgraded over the course of a round, on top of those defined by the character you play. “In one game I played a sneaky tracker, rendering myself invisible while firing out a broad tracking beams that let me see players through walls,” wrote Matt. “In my most successful round, I ran with a slam attack that launched me ridiculously high in the air before ramming back to earth with a big AOE damage blast. I comboed that with Shockwave, which also let me leap high into the air, but knocked enemies around and did burst damage. In my most silly round, I spent much of my time bouncing around inside a big metallic hamster ball.” Hyper Scape is currently free to download and play over on Uplay. Barring some catastrophe, it’ll still be there come its full release on August 11th. Being a Ubisoft game, I’d be remiss not to mention that the last month has seen numerous abuse and harassment allegations come out of that company, leading to the resignation of multiple high-profile executives. Following these reports, Ubisoft claim to be making “fundamental changes” to stem an issue that appears to extend through to the highest levels of the company.
