Playing Hubris for this week’s episode of VR Corner (above) was nothing short of an emotional rollercoaster for me.
I quickly fell in love with this brand new VR survival adventure game thanks to its stunningly beautiful graphics and simple to grasp yet satisfyingly fast motion patterns. Oh, and also the weird rope bridge stuff that made me laugh until I cried. But then, after about 40 minutes of play (about 18 minutes in the video), everything started to fall apart.
There’s a point in the game where you go from a linear action/puzzler experience to a crafting/survival section and that’s when the cracks in the game’s previously flawless facade started to show. First, a significant portion of the level’s geometry was bugged and broken, making it very difficult to find crucial objects. Then an enemy appeared in a position it shouldn’t have, which kept killing me and robbing me of 15 minutes of pesky item pickup.
This was followed by lines of dialogue appearing at the wrong time before finally I was hit with one of the worst, most jaw-dropping glitches I’ve ever encountered in a video game. Honestly, I’m rarely speechless, but this game completely ruined me, and you can see the game (and my sanity) slowly unraveling in this week’s VR Corner.
I hope there will be a patch for the game soon as I am not the only VR content creator to have problems encounteredbut as long as there is none, I move away.
Sadly, it’s not all sunshine and roses when the game is running either. The stunning visuals of the games opening section are soon replaced by standard, dark sci-fi hallway interiors, which robs the game of its “wow” factor quite significantly. I haven’t played past the part where the game completely screwed me up yet, but I could easily imagine that the jaw-dropping views of the first 10 minutes are just a case of smoke and mirrors and not a delightful hint to a larger, open world to explore later in the game.
The core gameplay can also be rather simplistic and repetitive, with major pacing issues appearing due to forced treasure hunts and long periods where you have to stand and listen to others speak. The gunplay is also lacking, with the weapons feeling sluggish and weightless and there’s little impact on your attacks. I counted about six different enemy types in the two hours I played which is a good number but the majority of them acted like dumb homing missiles while the few enemies humanoids I fought seemed to be devoid of all but the most basic of AI.
I was really excited to try out Hubris based on the trailers I had seen for the game, so I can’t help but feel a bit cheated by the end result. It’s a real shame because there’s a lot of potential here for a great action adventure game, or even just a semi-decent one if all the bugs can be ironed out. Unfortunately, as of this writing (December 7, the day the game launches), it feels like beauty is really only skin deep when it comes to Hubris.