Battle royale games are still a hot commodity, with titles vying for the success achieved by Epic Games' Fortnite, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and others. Ubisoft's Hyper Scape is one of the newest entries in the genre, and though its time on Twitch last month was overshadowed by Fall Guys, there are still plans to expand the experience while, apparently, paying respect to its predecessors.
Reddit user imBrettValentine found one very pointed reference to Respawn Entertainment's Apex Legends through a slip of paper saying "Mozambique Here!" hidden in Hyper Scape, and shared it with the r/apexlegends subreddit yesterday. The Mozambique shotgun is considered one of the worst weapons in Apex Legends, leading to many players creating memes about the frustrating experience of finding one during matches.
It seems Hyper Scape developers are in on this meme, given that shotgun does not exist in their game, and frankly it is nice to see them willing to reference the competition in a non-aggressive way. The massive maps that battle royale games set up are great places to hide content and references not every player will see or understand, though Fortnite has even referenced games like Mortal Kombat in its marketing material.
During today's Ubisoft Forward livestream event, a new limited-time game mode in Hyper Scape called Turbo Mode was announced for September 15, promising a more extreme experience. Players in Turbo Mode will only find max-level loot and regenerate health faster, while the zones constraining matches close faster and it's easier to achieve crown victories — an alternate means of winning rather than eliminating every opponent.
Respawn Entertainment has also been updating its popular battle royale with content regularly. Apex Legends recently began Season 6, introducing a Legend named Rampart to headline the proceedings. However, the new character has been particularly buggy, leading to a number of patches in recent weeks.
Though Hyper Scape has perhaps not been as big a smash hit for Ubisoft as its contemporaries in the battle royale genre, it's good to see there are still plans to improve upon the base game for those fans that have latched on. Having enough humility to recognize one's competition and poke fun at them is also a good look for Hyper Scape's developers, and it will be interesting to see if Respawn Entertainment offers any kind of comment in return.
Hyper Scape is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and is slated to launch for PS5 and Xbox Series X.