Every time I’ve seen 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sega’s Hyenas, I have been oddly charmed by it. After going hands-on at Gamescom, I feel the same way. But that’s a little worrying. When I think of the great games I love, I never feel ‘charmed’. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mass Effect 2 is not ‘charming’, it’s simply ‘good’. Charming is a sensation reserved for games that don’t quite have it, but that earn my affection anyway. I find BloodRayne charming. I find Shadows of the Damned charming. I find 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:X-Men: Origins Wolverine charming. This is the company Hyenas keeps.
Hyenas is a hero shooter plus an extraction shooter plus an arena shooter all in one. I’m not sure which of those it is first, and neither is the game, which adds to the charm but also the sense of unease around Hyenas. This is the second Gamescom in a row where I’ve spoken to product director Alex Hunnisett, and he mentions that interviews last year helped brew 🎶this mixture of a✤pproaches.
“You were one of the first people to say to me last year that it felt like an extraction shooter,” he says. “A couple of others said it as well. Until we’d had that conversation, I hadn't really thought about it. I went back to the team, and said ‘are we an extraction shooter, is that what we are?’, had an existential crisis, and after lots of chats with the creative director and a game director and both decided we were kind of a little bit of everything. We’re our own mode in the same way that a team deathmatch mode and a battle royale mode have lots of similarities, but they also have a lot of differences. But what unifies them all is that they’re first person shooters. We're thinking about ourselves as a first person shooter with a unique new mode.”
In fitting between the gaps, Hyenas offers something fresh in its approach. But that also means it’s not just appealing to one fan base (ie it isn’t just aiming for hero shooter fans), but for three, and needs to convince each of them to settle for its compromise. “Hopefully [it] will appeal to the sensibilities of a lot of folks,” Hunnisett says. “There'll be elements that folks who enjoy hero shooters also like, maybe that's [their] inroad. It's got the pace, certainly late game, of a team deathmatch in terms of how intense those encounters are. So it's got some of that as well. I don't think we really think of ourselves as any of those, it's almost like you have a star diagram, we're probably a little bit of this and a little bit of this a little bit there. So it'd be really interesting to see when we go into beta, we're gonna have that scale of audience for the first time [to see how they react].”
I wrote last year after my hands-off that Hyenas felt a little directionless. At times the collecting of IP-laden goods felt like a harsh satire of how easily we are swayed by corporate mascots, at others it had a more uplifting perspective that our nostalgia and memories forged by connections to art will outlast any currency. Sometimes it was just played straight as a cool thing to collect ins🐟tead of gold bars. This year, they seemed to have settled on that uplifting angle, with maybe a little bit of satire around the fact that corporations are b♔ad without really saying anything.
Going hands-on, you realise that all the talk 🐠around the game only matters so much. The game needs to actually play well to be worth anything, and on that front, it’s fine. Not spectacular, but it has enough interest to offer something new. Hyenas is yet to commit to a price point, but I think going free-to-play might be the safer strategy to convince people to check it out than banking on the 𝕴short term gains of a higher price point.
The zero gravity sections will be Hyenas’ most unique appeal, having recently switched the bouncing ability from the ballerina character onto all characters to allow for better traversal. The shooting is probably its weakest aspect, with most of the guns I saw fairly standard fa♋re. However, abilities can be used much more often in Hyenas. It’s definitely more fun and less hardcore, but less serious shooters have enjoyed a🍰 lot of success historically.
I played as Galaxia, a drag queen. All the characters are supposed to represent “outsiders,” I’m told. Hunnisett also assured me that diversity consultants were involved, and while there’s nothing offensive in the portrayal, there’s also nothing you couldn’t find after a couple of episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Howeveﷺr, her ability to absorb hits and throw the damage back is useful and a nice twist on the regular shield specials of other games.
As multiple teams play at once, you’ll be fighting both NPCs and other players in the same game. It feels a little hectic, with bouts of facing down fairly easy to beat robots suddenly interrupted by real players with far more damaging weapons. I see the potential for tactical metas to emerge here, but only if it draws in a big enough crowd. For all the mixed approaches, the gameplay♏ loop is reliable and familiar. Time will tell whether that generates the right response.
The story of Hyenas is simple and fixed - Earth has gone to shit an🌼d you need a ticket to Mars, which you pay for through stealing. But as a (kind of) hero shooter, Hunnisett tells me the narrative between characters could evolve, and that it has already taken shape a🅰fter the beta.
A further PC beta is coming August 31, where you’ll be able to check out what we tried at Gamescom. I’m sure you’ll find it charming, and I 🐼hope that will be enough.