The online shooter is a popular but merciless genre – you could say it’s its own battle royale, with only a few left standing after any length of time. Any developer trying to launch one has got its work cut out for it simply to avoid having to close its servers after a year or less. But if any studio can offer something fresh, it’s Creative Assembly, which gave us the terrifying Alien: Isolation.
Hyenas represents the latest evolution of the teambased shooter: the extraction shooter. These are PvPvE matches in which the goal is for each team to raid the setting for loot before trying to make off with the others’ spoils. Hyenas’ loot is one of the game’s main attractions, as rather than hoovering up glitzy macguffins you’ll be collecting nostalgic pop-culture items. That’s not the kind of stuff you’d think teams would be going in guns blazing for, but it fits the ethos of the game, as described by lead meta game designer Christoph Will: “Irreverence is a word we use a lot; it’s irreverent, with an attitude!