HYPERVIOLENT review: Old-school blood and guts

The term “boomer shooter” isn’t entirely serious, but it’s a great way to refer to titles like DOOM that feature swarms of pixelated enemies and unbelievable weapons. If that’s your vibe, you might fall in love with HYPERVIOLENT.

HYPERVIOLENT is a sci-fi shooter that pays homage to games like System Shock and DOOM, neatly folding a mix of Lovecraftian horror into a boomer shooter format. If you’ve been thinking about nabbing it, you’ll find The Escapist’s full review of the early access iteration below. 

The Escapist recaps

• HYPERVIOLENT is a retro shooter with heavy sci-fi themes, developed by nfoPrince and Terminist Arcade, and published by Fulqrum Publishing.
• With an old-school aesthetic and array of beautifully punchy weapons, HYPERVIOLENT does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s gory, it’s fast-paced, and it’s full of monsters to blow up with shotguns.
• There are plenty of interesting monster designs in HYPERVIOLENT with incredible sprite artwork. The AI powering these monsters is not particularly smart, but they’re great to look at and add to the overall aesthetic. 
• Despite the emphasis being placed on the core gameplay loop, there is a decent story to uncover in HYPERVIOLENT, told predominantly through audio logs and transcripts dotted around the various levels.
• While we did find the controls to be slightly fiddly in places, HYPERVIOLENT performed well and looked fantastic on the whole. Storming through hordes of enemies felt rewarding, and the maps were interesting to explore as well. 

Retro shooter energy with plenty of sci-fi flair

In HYPERVIOLENT, you’re placed directly in the middle of a violent outbreak tearing through a remote mining colony, tasked with figuring out what’s turned the inhabitants and workers into mindless killing machines. 

Within the first minute of setting foot outside of your spaceship, you’ll be presented with a steel pipe and a barrage of enemies to batter your way through, setting the tone nicely for what’s to come. The core gameplay loop is simple – figure out what’s happening via audio logs and exploration, and kill (almost) anything that moves. 

Despite being mostly focused on the gameplay loop and exploration, there’s a decent story to unpick when exploring HYPERVIOLENT.

As you explore, there’ll be a variety of audio logs to listen to and computers to search through, each giving hints about what unfolded in the mining colony and what the source of the corruption might be.

Exploration felt rewarding in HYPERVIOLENT, which is a relief to note, as the maps could feel somewhat labyrinthine. While unravelling the story and managing your resources, you’ll need to keep tabs on important locations like color-coded doors, gates that need powering up, and save points to mark your progress. 

Punchy combat with a neat dual-wielding system

Combat in HYPERVIOLENT is fast-paced and fun, with the option to experiment with a variety of builds and weapon combinations.

You can dual-wield most weapon combos – for example, a steel pipe and a pistol, an electrified pipe and a laser gun – and they all offer vastly different styles of play. There were some two-handed weapon options to choose from, too, like an excessively powerful shotgun.

For an extra challenge, it’s possible to dual-wield two melee weapons, like a pipe and an axe, making it much trickier when facing off against a room of ranged foes.

The variety of monster designs on offer in HYPERVIOLENT is impressive, each with its own aesthetic, attack style, and artwork. One of the best things about getting into a new level was waiting to see the new enemies that’d emerge from the shadows.

One minor downside here is the enemy AI, though. The vast majority of enemies in HYPERVIOLENT seemed to just wander over in a straight line, making it rather simple to pick them off with a gun at range. 

It didn’t end up being a huge issue once we bumped up the difficulty level a few notches higher – and it also made netting the headshot achievement a lot easier – but for some players, this may end up proving to be a sticking point. The lack of densely populated areas may also stick out to DOOM fans in particular, too. 

Outside of this, HYPERVIOLENT looked fantastic and felt brilliant to play. We didn’t run into any performance issues while playing, and aside from the mouse controls feeling a little wobbly in places, the game felt intuitive and punchy. 

The early access version of HYPERVIOLENT was a delight to tear through. The game offers all the blood and guts that you could want from an old-school, sci-fi shooter, with a surprisingly rich story and a wide variety of enemies to smash to pieces with steel pipes. Fans of DOOM, Quake, and System Shock will get a kick out of it. 

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