When first coming across the trailer for Hubris, I really thought it looked like a stunning game and this left me thinking can the game really look this good. So, when I was given the chance to check out an early demo of the game I knew I had to take the opportunity.
Where the trailer showed of some beautiful visuals, although as you all know, visuals can break a game, but it doesn’t really make a game. With that in mind we will get to this later, and start with the gameplay you got the experience in the demo.
The demo does throw you straight into everything it is at least going to cover gameplay-wise in it’s opening tutorial. This will see you running, jumping, swimming, climbing, working your inventory, installing batteries and shooting.
As soon as you are out in the world of Hubris, once you can take your eyes of the environments, you move through the opening area using all the physical side of tutorial, and in the most cases this works well. With the only real issue coming with that grabbing the ledges when missing the jumps, which can sometimes be unresponsive. One thing I noticed from my time playing the demo, the climbing and swimming elements are physically demanding, and it included a good bit of swimming – which requires you to move your arms like you are swimming, and not controlled via the analogue.
Outside of the platforming, swimming and climbing, I got to take on some rather aggressive squids while swimming with an underwater pistol, and then some bugs with a standard pistol near the end of the demo. The shooting handles well, even though for me the shooting angle seemed a little off, but, I was playing it via ReVive, so this might have been causing the issue.
Now, we have all been thrown off by game trailers that look beautiful and promise the world in visuals, then when you get your hands on, they’ve been massively downgraded. This is where Hubris threw me completely, as the game looked as beautiful as it did in the trailer inside of the head mounted display, and for me it really has captured beauty in VR.
Once you leave the ship, and first encounter the outside world, you will be taken back in awe at how beautiful it looks, and at many points through the demo I just stopped to take it all in – and the occasional screenshot. It really is one of the best looking games I have seen in VR, and in an early demo stage – the question is, can it be continued through the whole game? Only time will tell, but I really hope it does.
With these visuals in mind the demo does require at a minimum a GTX 1080, with them recommending at least an RTX 2070. This is where some additional questions were raised, the game is planned for a Quest and PSVR release, and with these specs it will be interesting to see what downgrades the team will need to make.
While playing the game, I did run a performance stats overlay (included in embedded video), and there was dips in frames at times while in the game, and some slight performance spikes. This was running it on I9-9900K, RTX 2080ti and 32GB of RAM, but, keep in mind this is a early demo – so performance could improve.
summary
Putting together the gameplay I got to experience and visuals the team have brought, when leaving the demo it left a very good impression. With the game looking like it’s going to be an action adventure story game, and I am interested in seeing what the team at Cyborn B.V. do, not only with the story, but to flesh out the gameplay and keep these visuals intact. But, if you have or haven’t heard of Hubris I would recommend wish-listing the game, and keeping an eye on it.
