Now Playing: Hubris (VR)

Hubris is a VR sci-fi action game in which you play as a recruit of the ‘Order of Objectivity’ on a mission to locate the mysterious (and missing) Agent Cyana on a hostile alien world. Quite what the ‘OOO’ is or does isn’t entirely clear. In fact, from a story point of view, nothing is entirely clear.

Are the OOR the good guys or the bad guys? They do seem to wear a lot of black and give off Star Wars Imperial vibes. There’s another faction in the game that seems to be at war with them – I assume, given they keep trying to kill you. When you do locate Agent Cyana she seems to have special powers . . . which I think are related to the unique resource mined on the planet?

And her plan is to activate a planetary terraformer to do . . . something. You do learn what the something is but then you wonder if that really was the entire point of her mission. You’re accompanied on your adventure by Lucia, a pilot who talks to you via a drone. You’ll also meet the aforementioned Cyana (who doesn’t talk a whole lot) and a guy named Wack (who talks way too much).

I’m not going to say the story or character stuff is bad – it’s not. It’s . . . fine. I think the problem I have with it is: it’s not dull enough to make me not care. Rather, it’s decent enough to make me wish it was a lot better. And in a way, that kind of applies to the game as a whole.

Hubris is visually impressive, arguably one of the most visually impressive VR games you can play. And it’s undeniably ambitious – pushing hard on visuals, action, voice acting, platforming, swimming (more on that later) alien creatures, explosive shoot outs, upgradable weapons and even a (kind of bad, sadly) vehicle section.

I really do admire it for that. For what was likely a small team with a limited budget, they really wanted to deliver as close to a ‘AAA’ VR experience as possible. And I’d say they weren’t far off succeeding. The problem Hubris has is that nearly every aspect of it just doesn’t quite hit the mark.

The platforming is a little too janky – I actually died a few times glitching through the scenery when trying to climb or jump. The in-game item menu is neat visually (it projects from your wrist) but awkward to use. The shooting is fun enough, but there’s no real feedback to when you take a hit, so you have to continually check your health level to find out if you’ve taken damage.

There were times an enemy was behind me, shooting me out of my field of view, and I wasn’t even aware of it until I noticed my health was going down. And enemy AI is kind of terrible. They mostly just run at you. Sometimes they do take cover. Sometimes they just stare at a wall.

The swimming is . . . the swimming nearly made me want to quit the game at one point because I absolutely hated the swimming controls that require you to physically swing your arms. I found it slow, inaccurate and tiring. The enemy selection isn’t bad for the game length (about 6 hours on Normal difficulty) but there’s nothing particularly exciting here – you get alien squids, bugs, drones, homing mines, guy with gun and bigger guy with bigger gun.

The vehicle section is a nice surprise towards the end of the game but it also handles like ass. The voice acting is fine but . . . stilted, to say the least. You have a single weapon you can upgrade and switch between three modes – pistol, shotgun and a rapid fire ‘burstgun’ although the shotgun is pretty much useless.

Despite all the little (and big – swimming!) irritations, I can’t say I didn’t have a fun time playing through Hubris. Because there is a good game here – a potentially great game, in fact. It’s just a shame that it just falls short in so many areas. Like I said – it’s ambitious, and I admire it for that. And I’d love to play a more refined, more focused, more polished and considered sequel. I do feel there’s a lot of untapped potential here. If you see it on sale, be sure to give it a spin.

6/10