Gaming🎮 Hypercharge: Unboxed is the relaxed shooter I'd have put hundreds of hours into back in the early 2000s

[Royal_Lizard]

Hypercharge: Unboxed has been around for a few years now, but its presence was limited to PC, where it had a small but dedicated following of players looking for quick retro blasts of classic FPS/TPS fun. After a timid Nintendo Switch release in 2020, it's finally made its way to Xbox, where it's performed remarkably well and gained a second life thanks to crossplay.

It's not often that we see such comeback stories pan out, especially when it comes to indie releases that focus on multiplayer modes. That's always a risky bet, but for Digital Cybercherries, it ultimately paid off. The secret? Doubling down on what made the game special in the first place.

Hypercharge is a game I've been watching from the sidelines for a while. Modern arena shooters that actually feel like the classics are a rare breed nowadays, as the genre has morphed into something else and has been mixed with MOBA mechanics to hell and back. It's true that Quake Champions continues to exist and have a community, but even the legendary series' latest entry couldn't escape the long shadow of bigger hero-based shooters. DOOM's (2016) competitive multiplayer modes were a solid but underrated take on the formula; as good as it felt, however, people never gave the MP component much attention. And of course, Epic Games' small Unreal Tournament reboot was scrapped once Fortnite took off.

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