Hubris Review

June 21, 2023

Hubris blew my mind when I played it on release on PCVR, and when the team announced it was coming to PSVR2, I could only imagine what they were going to achieve. Not only with the hardware features, but the quality of life improvements and learns from the PC release. I have now revisited the twin planet system, was worth the return journey?

STORY

In the game you take on the role of an unnamed recruit for the Order-of-Objectivity (OOO), who is sent with a pilot to a twin planet system in order to find a mysterious agent Cyanha. The question is can you successfully find her on this planet that is not only being Terra-formed, but also surviving the planets environment, wild-life and enemies of the OOO?

GAMEPLAY

Hubris brings with it a mix of gameplay elements, which makes use of the design of the twin planet system you are searching for Cyanha on. This will see you shooting, climbing, swimming and jumping around the environments that make up the world you are exploring.

With a mix of gameplay elements, you will normally find that some are mastered and some feel a little lacklustre in design, but the team at Cyborn have managed to make all the elements just as strong as the others. The four-weapons available all handle really well, and bring a more sci-fi feel, with an improvement coming to the reloading – with the spend clips popping out the end of the gun, and in order to reload you push them back into the chamber. The guns available are a pistol, shotgun, automatic pistol and an under-water pistol.

You are only provided the base pistol and under-water pistol as pick-ups, the shotgun and automatic pistol need to be printed. In order to print these you will need to collect resources while exploring and process them into printing materials in set rooms through the bases in the game. You can then spend these resources in printing weapons or upgrading them. Personally I found myself upgrading the standard pistol and using that the most.

The other two big elements of the gameplay is the climbing and swimming – with the latter being handled better than I have seen in any other VR game to date. Firstly, the climbing is very solid and gives the feeling of The Climb in how well it is handled, with any surfaces you can grab being highlighted blue when you hand is close to them. As aforementioned the swimming is perfect, this is done by doing swimming motions, with your direction being determined by the position of your palms. This took no time to get used to at all and felt so smooth when traversing under-water and taking on some very aggressive squids.

Finally you have the jumping system and this works very well, with holding down jump making you jump further, but outside of some platform elements I usually used the climbing system in it’s place. The platforming elements are easy to navigate around with the jumping system in place.

This pretty makes up the gameplay on offer from Hubris, as you navigate you way around the planet, surviving the wild-life, enemies and collecting resources on the way to either make items to help you, or improving your existing weapons. Putting everything together does make for varied gameplay to make sure the entirety of the campaign is kept feeling fresh.

PRESENTATION

Hubris looked absolutely beautiful on the PC, but with the dynamic resolutions offered by the foveated rendering on the PSVR2 it looks even more detailed and crisp – which blew my mind. As soon as you leave your ship and see the planets environment and water your jaw will drop to the floor, and then this level continues throughout the game. With fantastic lighting and reflections adding to the high-quality and detailed textures, it really is impossible not to get fully immersed in the world Cyborn have built.

Adding the beautiful visuals, they have made sure the audio continues with the trend of keeping you immersed in the world of Hubris. With some solid voice acting for all the characters involved, the environmental sounds setting the scene and all your weapon sounding nice. Also, the team have used the 3D Tempest Audio tech of the PS5 to make the spacial audio even better, and playing these with the Pulse Headphones made sure the game sounded better than ever.

COMFORT/CONTROLS

When it comes to comfort Hubris offers a number of options. You can play the game either seated or standing and with either hand or head orientated movement. Movement options do not include teleport, but the general movement speed is natural and they offer vignettes and the options of smooth and snap turning to try help with nausea for those who suffer from this in VR. There is no option to disable to climbing with it being such a big element of the gameplay, but they do offer settings for the speed of your pull up movement.

TRACKED CONTROLLERS

GAMEPAD

The PSVR2 version brings improved tactile haptics made possible by the PSVR2 Sense Controllers, the use of the adaptive triggers to make each weapon to feel differnet and from what I could work out headset heptics when taking damage.

LONGEVITY

My playthrough on PSVR2 took me just over three-hours, but this was because I knew exactly what was required in set sections – with my original playthrough on PC taking around five-hours. I feel that this is possibly a game some will play again, just to take in the beauty of the world of Hubris, and is certainly something you will use to show friends what visuals are possible in VR.

REVIEWED USING PLAYSTATION VR 2

For the purposes of transparency, this review was created using a review code provided by the company or their respective PR company. The use of a press code does not affect my judgement of the product.

REVIEW OVERVIEW

Hubris on PlayStation VR 2, has been my best experience with the game, and blew my mind for the third time – after the preview and release on PCVR. With the team taking what they learnt from the PCVR release, and making improvements and quality of life changes that let it down originally. Adding this the foveated rendering means the game looks even better and runs smoothly – removing the performance spikes I experienced on PC. With the best swimming mechanic I have experience in VR, solid shooting, climbing and platforming, it brings a mix of elements to keep you engaged. If you want to be taken in and fully immersed in a world Hubris certainly does this, and offers a decent story along the way.