HYPERVIOLENT is an amazing throwback to 90s gaming, and this brutal action-packed FPS brings back the old-school sprite-based character models that were used in heavy hitter classics like Doom and Duke Nukem. It is created by indie company Terminst Arcade and is published by Fulqrum Publishing.

HYPERVIOLENT will have the players responding to a distress signal from a remote mining colony, and you’ll find yourself in the middle of a horrific outbreak. You’ll need to search for survivors and answers on what is happening, and make a bloody mess of any hostiles that come across your path, and with the weapons you can pick up and use, it makes for a fun action shooter.

As you progress in the game, you will come across more weapons and upgrades, and with the very nice-to-see the dual-wielding feature, you can rock two pistols or a gun and a melee weapon. As soon as I saw you could use an arm as a weapon, it was hard for me to stop beating people to death with the bloody stub of a poorly departed owner.

The graphics use a classic low poly 3D texture with some hand-crafted pixel artwork. It takes place mainly in a space station, so there are different themed rooms to battle in, from loading bays to a nightclub that was being used to celebrate the progress being made with the project.

The enemy designs are pretty straightforward and are reused, but each new zone will introduce new enemies, such as security guards and scientists.

HYPERVIOLENT is fairly balanced when it comes to difficulty, but the AI does tend to get stuck on walls and they are not able to swarm into doorways.

The range of weapons can make it extremely fun as you can mix and match with single-handed weapons, allowing you to mix it up for some funny moments of swinging dismembered arms around, or just go full brutal destroyer and get into close range with a shotgun, blowing apart any enemies in the way.

The audio can be pretty great at times, with a mix of silent sections that really let you hear the groans of the enemies that lurk around the corners, through to times when the soundtrack starts busting out some amazing heavy music that sets the mood as you shoot down hordes of enemies. It really does give the 90s vibe of shooters like this from the past.

HYPERVIOLENT is a great 90s shooter for today’s gamers. It brings back all the good old memories of the old school while also adding new features to gunplay. The build I had a chance to play is still in early preview, so there is still content and fixes to be addressed.

The main issue I encountered was the enemy AI often gets stuck on objects, but with how it’s playing at this stage, it shows that the game is shaping up to be a great experience, and future updates will make it even more fun for players to experience.

Written by: Shane Walsh