Although Highguard has managed to avoid an official cancellation for now, its precarious beginning—defined by tepid critical reception, a vanishing player base, and internal layoffs—suggests its longevity is in doubt. It is hardly the first live-service endeavor to stumble out of the gate, and it certainly won’t be the last. One only needs to look at the recent trajectories of Concord, XDefiant, and the ill-fated Anthem to see the pattern.
Ubisoft’s Hyper Scape offers a particularly striking parallel. This battle royale title arrived in August 2020 with significant momentum, briefly becoming a titan on Twitch during its beta phase. However, that interest evaporated almost instantly upon its full debut. Critical scores reflected this disconnect, with the game stagnating in the mid-60s on Metacritic across all platforms.
Much of the backlash centered on Hyper Scape’s failure to carve out a unique niche in a crowded market. Its map was often dismissed as derivative, victory frequently felt tethered to arbitrary mechanics, and the visual identity was criticized as generic. While Ubisoft promised a systemic overhaul by October 2020, the intervention proved too late to salvage the game’s reputation.
Yet, much like the niche community currently sustaining Highguard with its modest player counts on Steam, Hyper Scape fostered a dedicated following. It wasn’t a failure of mechanics, but of momentum. Now, a group of the game’s most loyal advocates are endeavoring to resurrect the forgotten title from the digital graveyard.
The “Hyper Scape Revival” initiative seeks to restore the experience to its original state. The project is being spearheaded by a fan known as Fiirce on X (formerly Twitter). In their initial progress update, Fiirce clarified that while the single-player component is currently functional, the road to restoring multiplayer capabilities is a long one, potentially spanning months or years. A brief gameplay demonstration accompanied the announcement, showing the game running with impressive stability.
The announcement has sparked a wave of nostalgia among former players, many of whom have begun circulating archived clips of their best matches. The sentiment surrounding the project is overwhelmingly positive; fans have described it as a “misunderstood masterpiece” and “the finest arcade FPS” they ever experienced, lamenting that Ubisoft’s foray into the genre was simply a victim of poor timing.
Fiirce expressed that they are “stunned” by the outpouring of support and emphasized that they are collaborating with a small team to accelerate development. While the community waits for further updates, the parallels between Hyper Scape and Highguard remain clear: both games feature high-quality shooting mechanics that were overshadowed by peripheral issues.
Both titles possessed a high skill ceiling that rewarded mastery, yet this very complexity likely alienated a broader, more casual audience. Hyper Scape’s verticality and fluid movement made it exhilarating for those who could keep up, but frustratingly inaccessible for those who couldn’t.
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However, framing Hyper Scape as a game that was merely “ahead of its time” may be an exercise in revisionist history. While the dedication of its core fan base is undeniable, they represent a small fraction of the original audience. The broader gaming public moved on for a reason; whether a fan-led revival can overcome the fundamental flaws that led to the game’s initial closure remains to be seen.
Source: Polygon
