Hypercharge: Unboxed feels deeply nostalgic, like upending a toy box from your childhood and letting your imagination run wild amidst a sea of action figures, vehicles, building blocks, and other vibrantly-coloured plastic. Clearly inspired by late 90s animated movies such as Toy Story and, perhaps more notably, Small Soldiers, the game can be split into two parts: a wave-based tower defence mode playable either in solo or co-op, and a traditional spread of competitive PvP match types.
The former is the more fun and fleshed out of the two, featuring a list of campaign missions that task up to three other players (or bots) with fending off incoming hordes of enemies. They’ll make a beeline for your Hypercores, critical structures that can be reinforced by spending resources on walls and traps to impede enemies as you line them up in your crosshairs.
There’s an increasing variety of enemy types to help spice things up, from lumbering robots and speedy spinning tops, to evasive toy planes and towering bosses. Each of the maps are fairly small and self-contained with replayability coming mainly from running these stages on tougher difficulty settings while also crossing off a series of optional objectives to earn medals and unlock new customisation options and buildable fortifications.
Naturally, co-op with friends is the best way to enjoy this mode, putting your team tactics to the test against the toughest difficulty tier. While there’s an option to play alongside bots, they’re not the brightest bunch. Coordinating with other humans helps offset the creeping repetitiveness though this could also have been helped with more dynamic combat mechanics.
The gunplay in Hypercharge opts for arcade-like simplicity as you pick up weapons, ammo, and health packs, hopping through portals and launching yourself into the air using jump pads. It’s fun for a while though the Hypercharge arsenal lacks a certain depth or pizazz: there are no secondary fire modes, grenades, power-ups, or hero-style abilities that have become the norm in first person shooters. When facing down an opponent one-to-one in competitive play, wielding the bigger gun matters more than having a strategic play in your back pocket.
Speaking of competitive play, Hypercharge: Unboxed features five classic modes including Deathmatch, TDM, King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, and Infection, the latter being the most fun due to its unpredictable frenziedness. Each mode allows for 8 players which is an optimal number considering how tightly packed some of these maps are. However, much like solo play and co-op, the basic gunplay (and lack of engaging player progression hooks) quickly eats into the novelty factor.
One of the game’s highlights is seeing everyday settings transformed into makeshift battlegrounds, from cluttered bedrooms to playgrounds, creating vantage points and defences from otherwise inconspicuous objects. Developer Digital Cybercherries have also taken a page from the Aldi supermarket playbook with many toys and props accurately emulating well-known brands, augmenting them ever-so-slightly to avoid a copyright lawsuit. The game’s visuals are its strongest asset, with oversized environments and deep action figure customisation.