Can Hyenas loot the extraction shooter genre for all its worth?
30.08.2023 - 16:11
/ thesixthaxis.com
/ Harley Quinn
/ Can
There’s a parallel dimension out there where Sega won all of the console wars – a world where the Sega Saturn’s surprise US launch panned out against the PlayStation, where the Dreamcast was able to live up to its potential, and where Sonic (not Mario or Pikachu) was the go-to everyday video game character your grandma knew. That’s the world of Hyenas, Creative Assembly’s off-beat, attitude-filled extraction shooter.
We got to go hands-on with the shooter at Gamescom ahead of this week’s Hyenas closed beta, and found myself pleasantly surprised by how tightly constructed and thought out it is. Could this be a bit of a sleeper hit for Sega?
Well, if there’s one thing that’s stood out about Hyenas since its announcement last year, for better or for worse, it’s the game’s tone. The ultra-rich nipping off to Mars after a big chunk of Earth is blown up is absolutely what would happen, but the anti-billionaire and late-stage capitalism vibes of the resistance trying to steal back largely meaningless cultural tat is a little hollow when it’s coming from a large publisher like Sega.
There’s also this wild and quite messy collage of inspirations to be seen in the character designs, from a Sonic cosplayer to a drag queen styled like a Fifth Element or Total Recall character, a Payday-esque heister in a Nixon mask – OK, so that’s a Point Break reference really – a ballerina that could almost be a Harley Quinn concept art, and on and on.
It’s all a bit of a muddle and I don’t know who it will speak to, but even from the one relatively brief game that I got to play at Gamescom, it’s clear that Creative Assembly knows how to make a pretty good extraction shooter.
As with the rest of this FPS sub-genre, the idea is to drop into a map, search around for valuable loot while battling against roaming AI guards, and then get to the extraction point. Except you’re not the only players trying to do so, and rival teams can actively seek you out and try to spoil the party by taking you down, stealing what you’d only just stolen, and making it safely to extraction themselves.
The fundamentals of Hyenas take on this genre are pretty strong, with tight handling to the weapons that make for responsive and snappy combat. I settled upon Commander Wright for my first effort, her burst fire rifle having plenty of accuracy, while her foam cannon ability allowed for quickly altering and controlling the battle area with pop-up walls of foam to create cover and block passages.
Where many games like Escape from Tarkov are set in large and open feeling worlds, Hyenas takes you to the confines of a Plundership – a themed space ship shuttling between Earth and Mars with all these now-pointless rare collectibles from a broken civilisation. The