Table of contents for Issue 268 in Hyper

In some key respects, Far Cry has long been the open-world-shooter series that could. The potential has always been there. Getting caught up in those unscripted moments of gunplay, when the brown stuff hits the fan, but you manage to shoot, ram, or explode your way to victory have always felt satisfying. But whether it’s tacky protagonists, lacklustre storytelling, or undercooked mechanics, Far Cry has consistently fallen short of being downright addictive. Ubisoft Montreal is gunning to change this for Far Cry 5. From the outset of my hour-long hands-on time with Far Cry 5, in gorgeous 4K on a PS4 Pro, it’s clear the devs are leaning heavily into championing player empowerment. The best and most obvious way to achieve this goal in any sandbox shooter is by continuously…

1974 GAME CHANGERS Maze War (Steve Colley, Howard Palmer, Greg Thompson) Probably the first first-person shooter, Maze War put players in a vector wireframe, 3D grid they could navigate one step at a time. If you spotted another player you could shoot them. While Spasim may have a credible claim to being the first first-person shooter, it’s clear that Maze War is closer to what eventually became the genre. This truly is the very essence of the FPS. Over numerous iterations it was also so far ahead of its time in terms of what we would now consider staple genre features - networked multiplayer, a level editor, mod support, and a spectator mode - that it’s easy to suspect some sort of sorcery at work. It would not be at…

ASUS ROG GLADIUS II Let's get started in the big leagues. At $119, the Gladius II is Asus’ entry into the premium mouse market. Its key selling point is the ability to swap out the Omron switches thanks to the ROG ‘Switch Socket’. Sure, they’re rated to handle 50 million clicks, but after a few thousand they lose that responsiveness, so MOBA folks will make the most of this feature. Or you could always go for a different feel, as this mouse supports the Omron D2F Series switches: D2F, D2F-F, D2F-01, D2F-01F And Omron D2FC Series switches: D2FC-3M, D2FC-F-7N, D2FC-F-7N(10M), D2FC-F-7N(20M). There’s three thumb buttons, one of which is for DPI, yet once again it’s limited to just two preset DPI profiles. The sensor can handle 12000DPI, and is apparently…

Steven Bogos charts our very favourite places to fight For multiplayer shooters, maps are everything. An FPS could have the best gunplay, the deepest mechanics, and the coolest characters, but if the maps suck then the whole game falls apart. A good map blends all of the other elements of the game together seamlessly, while a really great map is often more memorable than the game itself. If I were to mention a game like Unreal Tournament, Quake or Counter-Strike, I guarantee you the first thing to pop into your head would be one of their iconic maps. There have been a lot of shooters with a lot of maps over the years, and we think it’s high time that the best of these levels get the appreciation they deserve.…

You get Play of the Game frequently in Overwatch. Your KDR in Call of Duty is 2.0. Nobody has ever gone viral with a video of you getting wrecked in Rainbow Six. You’re good. But how do you become great? I reached out to the best players around to talk about how they’ve mastered their FPS games of choice. OVERWATCH Andrew ‘RQT’ Haws Captain, Australian Team (World Cup) If someone was looking to improve their skills, would you advise picking a position and really working on it, or having a shot at everything and seeing what works? I think there’s two aspects to that. The first would be making sure you do something that’s fun, where you’ll be motivated to play. But also, it makes more sense to focus on…

PLAYERS ARE EFFECTIVELY INTERACTING WITH THE RECENT-PAST GHOSTS OF OTHER PLAYERS On the surface, the core netcode of your average online shooter hasn’t changed a whole lot in recent years. But dig a little deeper, and there’s a wealth of tweaks, improvements and, in some instances, backward steps that greatly impact the all-important feel of playing shooters online. Back when we were all high-ping bastards (HPBs), online multiplayer required players to take their latency into account to hit players running across their aim. Even for shooters that used hitscan ballistics, like Counter-Strike of old, a player with, say, 200 latency would have had to lead their target by 0.2 of a second to ensure a hit. As HPBs became low-ping bastards, developers advanced netcode technologies to further push the illusion…

Unlike many gamers my age, my love of FPS didn’t arrive with Wolfenstein. Sure, it was cool, but it was also a game I couldn’t play for very long without getting lost or bored. Similarly I let Doom pass me by; another neat game, but I found I still had little patience for key-hunting. Duke Nukem 3D’s puerile humour and partial nudity added a layer of the forbidden over the whole approach, and I played it a lot for that reason rather than any love of the genre. Quake was the game changer for me, but not for its full 3D, or its dark satanic tone and Reznorbuilt soundtrack; it was the first time I experienced competitive online gaming. Not that I was particularly competitive to begin with, because I…

James O’Connor seeks the fountain of youth Kim "Geguri" Se-yeon is considered the world’s best Zarya player in Overwatch. She’s the first female player signed to an APEX team, has a win rate of 80%, and endured a scandal during the Nexus Cup qualifier where she was so good she was accused of cheating (she wasn’t). Geguri is also 17 years old. Young people have better reactions – studies suggest that reflexes start to deteriorate at just 24 – and are prevalent within the various FPS esports scenes. In the same way that your high school’s best footy player was later signed to the Crows, the kids who are mastering headshots now have reason to think about how this might impact their future. NERF THIS Leyton Gilchrist, 15, is excited…

As a teenager I spent four years doing an Ansett aviation scholarship, training to be a pilot for an airliner that most of you no longer remember. One slight problem though – I’d never flown before, so when the flight training began I discovered at the time that I was terrified of heights. This led to my fall back plan – anything to do with IT. As a six year old, my stepfather used to bring the first x86 PCs home for work, as he worked in computerised payroll software. This gave me the chance to tinker and play with it as much as I liked, and I was soon in love. This then led to the best Xmas present ever, a Commodore 64 with matching monitor. I’ll never forget…

The year was 2007, and the Half-Life franchise had yet to become a running joke. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 had just hit the shelves as part of The Orange Box, which the vast majority of us bought just to play the next (final?) chapter of the Half-Life saga. Little did we know that Episode 2 would actually end up being the least influential game of the bundle. The other two games included in The Orange Box were of course Portal, which managed to meme its way into the hearts of everyone on the internet (something something cake is a lie hur hur), and Team Fortress 2, which revolutionised the world of multiplayer shooters. Before TF2, shooter developers had this obsession with gritty realism. It sort of started with Counter-Strike, but…

I was bunkered down in a featureless building with the other members of [bog] squad, my medic-issue MG36 light machine gun pivoting from entry point to entry point. There was a lot of time left on the clock, and the enemy forces had pushed us back to the final point awfully quickly. Their tanks advanced on us, and the building we were in was already being torn apart. As long as I lived, I could keep reviving anyone downed; as long as someone on the squad survived, I could warp back quickly after death. But the writing was splattered on the wall in human brains, and we all knew it. I’d been playing Bad Company 2 with [bog] squad for a while at this point, and I decided, as my…

INPUTS ARE SNAPPIER AND YOU CAN AIM MORE ACCURATELY WITH MORE FINELY GRAINED MOVEMENTS High refresh rate monitors. Low-latency, high-precision mice. Powerful GPUs and CPUs. Super speed storage. As gamers we’re always told that we need the very best of the best to unleash our potential as competitive games, but is this always true? On the professional eSports scene, every speed boost is a boost closer to the first place, but what about average gamers who play from home? We’re going to look at the pros and cons of the very latest in gaming peripherals, and see whether you really need them or not. Let’s start with one of the most popular topics – high refresh rate monitors. HIGH REFRESH DISPLAYS When we’re referring to a display’s refresh rate, we’re…

If there’s one genre that can bring out the uttermost vile behaviour in gamers, it’s the survivor style of FPS. There’s just something about them that often brings out truly ghoulish behaviour, where murder clubs are formed and ritualistic fights to the death become rites of entry to other places. The flipside is also true; in such dangerous worlds, it make sense to have some buddies to back you up. It could be as simple as giving a stranger a bottle of water, or taking them to your camp and helping them with rations. These games are fantastic microcosms of life – generally after the apocalypse – and the possibilities for emergent gameplay are nearly endless. So where did this genre start, and how has it progressed? GARRY’S AT IT…

Imustn’t let this register on an emotional level. This sniper, perched on high like a disgruntled postal worker, is quashing any hopes of little ol’ lone wolf me rushing behind enemy lines with his 360-degree view of the battlefield. The surface-level problem is my lack of respect. My on-foot frontal assaults are all for naught. The deeper issue is this sniper has popped more heads than an acnephiliac. It’s time to try something new. Thankfully, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 offers variety in explosive spades. Like any shooter, I could sneak around. But that’s boring. Maybe I counter-snipe. While poetic, in a Saving Private Ryan kind of way, it’s not the calibre of frag my nemesis deserves. Jets, choppers, and tanks are in high demand, and probably better used for anti-vehicular…

Drill • BioShock 2 Putting you in the shoes of its predecessor’s best-known enemy is a cool twist for a sequel. Aside from the bulky diving suit allowing you to walk around outside Rapture the highlight of playing as a Big Daddy is undoubtedly that bloody enormous drill bit where your right hand should be. Spot a splicer across a room, wind up the drill then dash towards your foe, splattering it across the nearest wall. It’s brutal, messy and never fails to deliver a satisfying kill. Blackjack • Thief (series) The blackjack is the iconic weapon of the Thief series. As a stealth game, your chance of survival increases the more distance you put between yourself and, well, everyone else. But the blackjack requires you to get up close…