We were pretty sceptical when we first learned about Cyber Hunter. NetEase had previously released Rules of Survival, a battle royale that mimicked PUBG but wasn’t quite as good.
So you could forgive us for not being all that enthused about a not as good Fortnite clone hitting Android.
Much to our surprise though, Cyber Hunter is so much more than that, and offers genuine innovation in the battle royale space.
It’s really not all that similar to Fortnite. You won’t spend your time building huge structures or hitting trees and rocks with a pickaxe for resources. There’s just one resource, Quantum Energy, which you use to build everything.
You collect it much like you do your weapons and other gear. It’s just dotted around the world and you’ll gather it automatically as soon as you step near it.
Cyber Hunter borrows the building system from Fortnite but massively streamlines it
There’s a limit to what you can build with it too. Rather than just select wood, metal, or brick-based buildings, you can bring up to three preset structures into battle with you.
The variety of these is pretty insane, ranging from simple barricades to AoE healing machines. Picking your favourite three out of the tons of skills you unlock as you progress is really fun, and adds an extra layer of strategy to proceedings.
It also gives you a greater reason to work and coordinate alongside your team. You could feasibly have a dedicated healer, builder, and destruction specialist. Heck, you can even have a player dedicate themselves to summoning vehicles.
While those that really love the building in Fortnite will probably lament the lack of creativity, we think it offers a solid alternative to those that aren’t all that bothered. It also lets you create your own playing style, which is pretty cool.
When not building stuff out of Quantum Energy, you’ll play much the same as you do in any other battle royale.
The cyberpunk aesthetics are really well done, and feel fresh
You’ll pick where to drop off on a sizeable map, dropping out of the ship onto a hoverboard as you speed towards ground. The cyberpunk sci-fi aesthetics actually feel like a breath of fresh air in the genre, even if its colourful nature does remind us of Fortnite a lot.
Land in a named location and you’ll generally find the best loot, much like in its competitors. You can opt to land somewhere safer though and pick off players from a safe distance to steal their better loot. The option is yours, and we found success doing either.
Moving around the world is probably the game’s highlight though – it’s just so smooth and fun. You can roll out of the way of gunfire, climb literally anything, and glide to quickly get off the top of a mountain.
When you’re comparing the movement mechanics to Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild, you know that a game is doing something right.
It’s just so freeing. While you can still sneak around and pick people off, summoning a bush to hide in plain sight, we felt more confident than ever running around seeking out opponents to murder.
The amount of options at your disposal encourages you to get stuck into combat
Because if you get into trouble, you’ve got so many options at your disposal to finish off your opponents. You could pop up a barrier and fire from safety, chuck in barrage of grenades, climb a building and get a height advantage – there are so many options! If all else fails you can dodge to safety too, so you never really feel in danger.
The gunplay also packs a nice punch and feels incredibly satisfying. You can look down the scope for more accuracy or simply fire in third person. There’s some recoil to control, but not too much, both appealing to pros and casuals alike.
Overall, we’re really quite taken with Cyber Hunter. It’s hardly unique, borrowing elements liberally from various other battle royales and games but the way it all combines makes it more than the sum of its parts.
Just when the battle royale genre was starting to feel a bit stale, Cyber Hunter comes along like a breath of fresh air and gives us a reason to dig in all over again. We wholeheartedly recommend this one.
You can grab it right now on Google Play.
Fortnite better watch out
Cyber Hunter might look like a Fortnite clone but its liberal borrowing of a bunch of other battle royales and games makes it more than the sum of its parts. This is the best battle royale to come to mobile since Fortnite.
