Roguelite games have really been on the rise lately and I have been enjoying a good majority of them. HYPERGUN reminds me a lot of another roguelite game I recently reviewed called Mothergunship, which I praised highly. I’m happy to say HYPERGUN is another solid title that delivers frantic FPS action with some unique ideas.

In HYPERGUN you play as Dewey Owens who is an intern at DevTech, a company that is developing a HYPERGUN that will help destroy the incoming alien invasion. With the help of a befriended janitor, Dewey gains access to the DevTech lab after hours to have a go at the simulation machine to create his very own HYPERGUN.

In HYPERGUN you will fight through 6 different levels and collect up to 120 different kind of mods throughout to create the perfect killing machine. Each level has multiple rooms within it and each room is procedurally generated, that way each playthrough never feels exactly the same. You start off only being able to play as Dewey, but there are other characters you can unlock as you collect currency through playthroughs. Each character has a set of skills and perks as well as a starting weapon which will get heavily modded as you play.

Since HYPERGUN is a roguelite game you should expect to die quite a bit, but like most roguelite’s, death is embraced positively with the notion that you will be leveling up. There is quite a bit to unlock in HYPERGUN, so you may want to focus on certain upgrades that are more beneficial for early runs. Upgrades include characters, skills, mods, and items. Unlocking skills that allow you to group enemies or provide health before buying weapon modes or characters are important early on. Weapon mods will be equally important, but the mods are all randomly dropped throughout the level which means you may not even get that mod in the early levels, which of course defeats the point.

Each level increases both in difficulty and the amount of rooms within the level. There are multiple paths to take and some will lead to a dead end, so finding the map room early on is important. Knowing your path to follow, as well as where the mod chests and store rooms are, are pivotal to making it far. Challenge rooms are also important to find, for they offer good rewards for both currencies that are used in the store room and used outside the simulation to upgrade. However, these challenge rooms are aptly named as they will challenge you with large hordes and multiple waves of enemies so be prepared.

While for the most part everything is well implemented, there are a few things that could have been included. The challenge rooms are fun, but there isn’t any variety to the challenges; it is always only defeating large waves of enemies. This goes for other rooms as well. Besides the challenge room, there aren’t any other types of rooms that provide a different objective or bonuses to play differently. For a game that is all about creating the best weapon, there for some reason isn’t a room to modify your weapons and swap the mods you want. When you pick up a new mod it is automatically equipped without the option to decline it or swap. Adding in one workbench per level either at the beginning or hidden in one of the rooms, would have added a new level to the gameplay.

The graphics are very eye catching with its computer simulator art style and a very bold neon lighting system. It is a wonderful effect that really pops throughout each stage. Each level has its own overall style and even though the rooms are randomly generated, you will run into some very similar feeling rooms within each area. Enemy design is decent and there are a good variety of different types, but with randomly generated rooms and different themed levels, the enemy design unfortunately stays the same throughout.

Sound design for the most part is well done, but it’s the one weak link in HYPERGUN. Weapon sound effects are too similar across the board, even when it is modded heavily and damage effects are a little lacking. The sound track has a couple great tracks to it as well, but there just isn’t enough battle music. The battles will often outlast the battle song length and they weren’t mixed well enough to loop until the fight is over so the song will end and there will be quiet until the next song starts.

For the most part HYPERGUN is another fantastic frantic FPS shooter with roguelite elements. It’s definitely not perfect as it needs some gameplay additions and some love on the soundtrack, but if you’re as addicted to these games as I am, it’s definitely worth the purchase. The gameplay, graphics, and meta jokes, like adding in their own YouTube announcement video for HYPERGUN within one of the emails in the game, are great.

 

Graphics: 9.0 Stylish simulator art style with some bold eye catching neon lighting. Environments can be repetitive.	Gameplay: 9.0 Fast and frantic first person shooter with great variety in weapons and mods to collect.
Sound: 8.0 Weapons sound too similar, even when you have different mods and some damage effects aren’t great. Soundtrack needs more battle songs.	Fun Factor: 8.5 Roguelite elements work well despite a bit of a grind until you get good enough weapons to even pass level 2. Overall extremely fun despite a couple issues.
Final Verdict: 8.5

Reviewed on PC.
HYPERGUN is available now on PC and available Fall 2018 on PS4 and Xbox One.

A copy of HYPERGUN was provided by the publisher.