HyperParasite Review

"Infection"

Campaign

April 7, 2020 at 3:48am
By Jason Stettner

This is a rather interesting, and fairly brutal rogue-lite twin stick shooter that also has some brawler elements to it. In this you basically play as the bad guy where you’re going about either infecting people to take them over as a host, or killing anyone that gets in your way. You’re also trying to collect their brains, and that will allow you to control new foes.

This is somewhat of a rarity however, and you need to drop it back at the main base area. On top of that, the cash you earn will also be needed to unlock the new potential hosts, or other bonuses found within the base that are always shuffled. You’ll battle through various procedurally generated streets as you collect brains to take over new hosts, eliminate foes and discover other upgrades.

There are multiple areas to progress through, and you get an element of choice in this as you continue to survive. Each area has some interesting extra boss fights to take part in, and bonus enemies to take on. This can also be played in two player local coop if that’s your sort of thing, a nice extra. There’s also a bit of a narrative here, as you aim to take on the President through this strange dystopia that feels inspired by the 80’s.

Gameplay

The aesthetics are great here in terms of the environments, and the damage you can do to people. It gets quite gory, especially if you explode out of someone early in order to get a better host body. Every character has unique abilities and there are sixty different options. Each area has its own set of characters as well, which does make it somewhat harder to progress as you’re basically starting from scratch there.

It would have been nice to see a little bit of a transfer in regards to characters between areas. Again, this is rather brutal in terms of difficulty. It took a long time before I was feeling as though I was progressing. Not my sort of thing when it comes to the rogue-lite genre. There’s definitely a good challenge here for those that want it, and I actually had quite a bit of fun taking that on.

The little blob of chaos was really neat, and it was quite something to attach into a host. They delivered well on the procedural elements as it did continue to feel fresh across the many, many attempts that I had at surviving. It was neat to gather extra skills, choose perks during play and exploring this weird landscape.

The Conclusion

HyperParasite is a hardcore rogue-lite with a rather interesting hook to its gameplay as you latch onto people and then battle away with them. It’s definitely unique, and certainly surprising. I wish there would have been a better sense of progression here, as I did sort of struggle to get rolling. It also feels somewhat overwhelming in terms of the many areas, and characters to unlock.

There’s a lot of brain matter to capture out there, and so many poor people that need to be eliminated on your quest for total domination. It’s such a weird perspective to play, but it works well here for a generally gnarly time. It’s got great visuals, interesting and varied characters along with some intense action to be had as you try to survive just a little longer each time.

Read our Amoeba Battle Review
View our Game Hubs

HyperParasite Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by PR Hound

Rating Overall: 7.2