- Reviewed On Switch
- Purchased At Full-Price
- Also Available On PC
Hyperbox: Uncharged can simply be described as a FPS based defense, similar to Gears of War, but with the playful Toy nature of Toy Story, even down to platforming and collectibles similar to the Toy Story video game tie-ins.
Like most horde mode-ish games, you’ve got waves of increasingly difficult fights with a goal of either surviving or in this game’s case, defending at least one of the three energy towers. Up to four customizable action figures will be armed with an rifle that can be heavily modified upon picking up barrels, attachments, scopes and grips. Also around the map are coins, secrets, health pickups and weapon mod slot machines, to aid you on your defense.
What will help you the most against a variety of historic toy spoofs are defenses you can purchase and place around the areas. You can only hold three defense placements at a time per mach as your loadout, but unlocking anything additional than what you start out with will depend on the challenges you complete.
Every unlock will tell you things like, “Complete this stage with a platinum (no energy towers were destroyed and hardly damaged)” or “Collect all the coins in this stage”. There’s no level-up progression as its all challenges. That’s all fine, but if you accidentally switch yourself off build mode when trying to look for the secrets, the next round will immediately start.
I feel like, instead of having these trinkets scattered around the map to collect in between rounds with short time, you could have had challenges that revolve around the core gameplay. This whole collect-a-thon just doesn’t cooperate with the stellar FPS base defense combat and its required for a portion of your character customization or new defense placement unlocks.
I had a blast when the game came down to what it advertised. They use all these nostalgic toys to create new challenges to take on, and it especially works when you don’t always know which set of enemies the game is going to throw at you. It definitely acts like a classic shooter in that your guns are crazy and creative, yet, there’s no iron sights or sliding (which is perfectly fine).
I enjoy just picking up attachments and discovering for the first time, what the heck can the weapon now do. Its easy to say that Hypercharge: Unbox is also a gorgeous game that runs at a perfect 60fps on Switch when docked, 30fps when in handheld mode. Its a silly, frantic shooter that you can just have fun playing with friends or online players. Each of the maps puts you in real environments from a small toy’s perspective and that’s always cool to look at or explore.
Some of them may seem obvious, but when you go to a map like an air hockey table, that just brings up “Okay, how am I going to defend on this small platform?”. There’s a lot to love about this game…and plenty to not love. For the great fun you may have, if you walk into a match where players are either idle or gone, you’re eventually screwed no matter what. Yeah, there are single player and offline co-op match options, but the difficulty doesn’t scale on player numbers, which sucks when at times, I’m lucked out.
It brings the concern of how dedicated will the online community be on consoles and that will entirely fall on commitments for Switch-version post-launch updates from the developers. There’s also a competitive multiplayer mode where you can partake in a Deathmatch against other players on any of the 10+ maps. I could barely find a match where I’m fighting more than one player and can’t find any match for the other pvp mode.
Since the maps are so huge for a small toy, pvp matches suck when you’re having to travel for that one or two opponents. Plus, unlike co-op, there are no unlocks that benefit from playing pvp and no defenses to set up on your opponents.
Issues aside, I still really enjoyed Hypercharge: Unboxed. Say there are no post-launch updates and the community dies out, there’s still plenty of joy bringing my Switch to a friends house, then having a “Good” time, fighting Beyblades and Boglins with crazy toys. I hope the developers keep updating the Switch version as I really had a great experience with this game.
Pond's Press 