And now it’s a VR game releasing on Quest and PSVR2. This isn’t the first video game based on the franchise, in fact – it’s the seventh, but it’s the first one built for VR! 

Once Bitten

You play as a character called Justice, the main antagonist of the game who’s trying to retrieve an artifact of importance, and the game lets you choose between female and er..slightly less feminine hands, and female or male voices for your characters. It’s set in a gothic version of Venice. And it takes a substantial amount of inspiration from Dishonored, and anybody who’s played Dishonored will notice that immediately. Your teleport ability is called ‘blink’. You can pull off blink attacks, and you have a fairly good skill tree to fill out as you progress through the game. 

You start with fairly limited powers, you can teleport around, climb pipes, and various other things. Sneak up on enemies, grab them, and suck them to death. Soon, you’re given a wrist-mounted crossbow, for which you start acquiring various types of bolts. 

You can play the game as a stealth game and are encouraged to do so. The bad guys have guns and rifles. You do not, and it only takes a few shots to take you from undead to dead as a doorknob. However, as you acquire more and more skills, you can also start becoming more aggressive, since it costs less to perform deadlier actions. But it’s more difficult to acquire those skills if you’re playing it like an action game since you earn more skill credits by fulfilling stealth goals such as remaining undetected or not killing any mortals. It’s a good way to balance the gameplay and keep players from going too gung-ho.

As a single-player campaign, Vampire is refreshingly ambitious. Nobody’s going to be calling this another tech demo. Fast Travel Games have tried to build a full-on game here and should be appreciated and applauded for doing so. There are a good number of levels, called ‘Undertakings’, each of which has a small intro, and most of which have a gameplay prelude on the streets of Venice before you reach their start. 

The story isn’t as engaging as it could be, but it also doesn’t suffer from lengthy bouts of exposition, so although it may not engross you narratively, it also won’t bore you. It’s a decent enough story, but since it’s adapting the first game in a set of several tabletop games, it doesn’t feel very conclusive. In fact, by the end, it very much feels like it’s setting up a sequel. 

That’s not a bad thing, at all. A series of Dishonored-type VR games with vampires? Sure, sign me up. 

It’s not all smooth sailing, though, but we’ll get to that. First, let’s talk about pretty things. 

Sangue Sacre 

The first thing you’ll notice when you start up Vampire is that its night-time Venetian environments are stunning, no matter which platform you play it on, and I’ve been to Venice. It’s quite beautiful, but what they don’t tell you is that it’s dank. That’s what happens when you have so much water around all the time. But I digress. Built with Unreal, Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is beautiful, and you’ll be looking around you all the time, taking in the scenery and thinking, damn, this game’s a looker. 

The same, understandably, doesn’t apply to the NPCs, they are more stylized, and to a certain degree, their low polygonal count somewhat contrasts with the environment.

A weaker point, perhaps, is that all the characters are key-frame animated rather than motion-captured, so their body language and gestures feel stiff and clumsy, somewhat destroying the illusion that you’re talking to another character. 

One thing to note, however, is that the PSVR2 version, although it has some better graphics, more noticeably when it comes to particle effects, flames in barrels, etc, appears to have a slower frame rate than that of the Quest version. It simply doesn’t play as smoothly and seems to chug as you move through the streets. It’s very odd, considering how much more powerful the PS5 is compared to either Quest. Re-Projection issues? Perhaps. 

So if you have the choice, I’d recommend you play it in Quest unless FTG release some kind of patch that makes it smoother on PSVR2. 

But let’s move on to the audio.

The Red Violin

The first thing you’ll notice about Vampire‘s audio is the wonderful soundtrack composed by Two Feathers (Elvira Björkman and Nicklas Hjertberg) and featuring violinist Jeff Ball. Their work on Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is possibly the best soundtrack work I’ve ever heard in a VR game. It’s absolutely suited to the game’s setting and perfectly complements the pre-dawn environments in which you roam as you silently hunt down or stealthily avoid the bad guys. 

The voice acting for the main characters is convincing, whether you’re playing as a male voiced by Zach Hoffman, or as a female, voiced by Diana Gardner. Both do a great job, and they sound appropriately grave, lifting the main character’s drama. 

The sound effects, perhaps, are the weakest part of the audio. A lot of heft and weight in VR games is created by good sound design. Sure, haptics can help, as can good in-game physics, but it’s the sound that can make a gun FEEL heavy, or make a crossbow SOUND powerful. In Vampire the sound f/x work, but they feel a little underpowered. 

Defanged

As much as I love most of what Vampire: The Masquerade offers, and appreciate massively the undertaking (see what I did there?) that Fast Travel Games have taken upon themselves, I am almost mad at Vampire, not because it’s bad, it isn’t, but because it gets so damn close to being an exceptional game, and then fumbles in various annoying ways. 

The mechanics and general polish are often clunky. Vampire tries to simulate the Half-Life: Alyx style of remote grabbing objects, but its curve is too slow, meaning you might’ve moved your hand from where an object is going when you pulled it, so it overshoots your hand then it corrects itself by snapping into your hand. It looks and feels clumsy, taking what was a great feeling mechanic from Alyx and making it feel clunky, clumsy, and janky.

The game’s visual language can also be occasionally confusing. Initially, it feels like it’s teaching the player that doors with handles can be opened, whether currently locked or unlocked, and that doors without handles are closed areas, but then around 30-35% into the game, the game starts breaking those rules, doors with handles don’t open at all.

The notes you find scattered throughout are handwritten, but then when you grab them, you have another layer floating above them that you actually read. Why not just make their original texture legible? It makes some of the game feel like it’s held together by duct tape. 

Another annoying thing is the rats. Yes, I know rats are naturally annoying, but here they function as health pickups. The problem is that you can’t remotely grab them, presumably because they’re living creatures and not inanimate objects, but I’d just make the distinction between ‘large’ and ‘small’ things and let me pick up a damn rat while I’m walking and contemplating silent assassinations instead of having to chase rats, stoop, pick up rats. It slows down what could have been a far more fluid and empowering experience. Why can’t I just flick grab a rat while I’m walking, and dig into its belly while I’m contemplating my next kill? That would feel a lot more like I’m a ‘deadly creature of the night’. 

The teleportation, whether to go to a ledge, or to attack an enemy is twitchy, sure, nobody’s hand is perfectly steady, but the game doesn’t allow for this, meaning that rather than aim and go, aim and go, aim and attack, you’re often carefully re-adjusting your aim, slowing things down and making you feel clumsy, destroying the illusion of a smooth stealthy killer flowing and teleporting around the levels taking out enemies. 

There is a general lack of flow in the game, and I’m not saying it destroys Vampire, but it takes it from being a fantastic game to being a pretty good game that’s not all it could be. And while we’re talking about occidendum interruptus, I can’t ignore the long loading screens, honestly, they’re painful.

I usually don’t spend this much time mentioning my issues with a game, but I like so much about Vampire, it’s so close to being amazing, that I feel the need to explain why it isn’t, in the hope that Fast Travel Games can make it so. 

It’s so damn close. 

Vamp Verdict

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is an ambitious game set in a beautiful environment offering plenty of gameplay possibilities. It’s a promising start to what could become a great VR franchise, but what could’ve been a sublime experience is hampered by poorly executed mechanics, long loading screens, and, at launch, a few bugs that will frustratingly waste your time. 

A few weeks ago, nDreams gave us and other press outlets and YouTube channels a chance to play a demo of it, and we covered that, but it was short and did little but make us all collectively froth at the mouth and wait patiently for the final launch build. Now that it’s here, I can set your mind at ease; it’s a joy to play. 

The narrative conceit behind Synapse is, as I’ve said before in my preview video, lifted straight out of Christopher Nolan’s Inception. You are a recruit tasked with saving lives by infiltrating a rogue colonel’s mind and fighting past his mental defenses to find out where he’s planted a bomb so you can thwart his plans. Consider this the Inception VR game that could’ve happened in some alternative reality where video game adaptations of movies were actually cool. 

Neural Networks

With this narrative firmly in place, the player goes through the mostly monochromatic levels of the game, fighting off tougher and tougher enemies as they drill down into the colonel’s preconscious, his conscious, and finally, his subconscious mind.

You’re equipped with a starting pistol, and some very basic telekinesis at the start, you can throw inanimate objects around the map, crush enemies with big cubes, or grab exploding barrels gently to move them around and then crush them for a very satisfying explosion.

The game also allows you to level up, both across runs and within runs. Completing certain achievements, called Revelations, awards you with Insight points that you can use to unlock permanent upgrades on a skill tree, divided into three branches; Tactician, Assassin, and Survivor. 

Within each run, you get access to temporary mods called Mind Hacks, these are quite inventive; one gives your bullets a bounce, another turns your last one or two shots in a cartridge into grenades, etc.

Synapse is built around making you feel like a badass and providing you with enemies that challenge that badassery so you don’t get complacent no matter how powerful you’ve become.

Retinal Resplendence

There are no two ways about it; Synapse is a looker. The monochromatic art style looks fantastic on PSVR2 and is excellently infused with orange, red, pink, and purple highlights that flawlessly draw your attention to the gunplay and telekinesis. The levels themselves are well-designed, providing ample opportunities for mobility without ever feeling lost. You also have a scanner inside your left palm, that you can glance at anytime. It’ll show you where the enemies are and, once upgraded, where the health fonts are as well. 

Everything about Synapse is polished, stylish, and elegant; the user interface, the levels, the icons, right down to the font choices. Everything about the game screams polish, and the art team at nDreams deserves massive kudos for what they’ve done here.

Echoes of the Mind

Not to be outshined, the audio in Synapse is superb. The audio design is excellent, from the general soundscapes and UX interactions down to the sound design of the weapons, gunfire, and explosions. Everything feels meaty and full, and if that weren’t enough, the game has landed two of the best voice talents available, with Jennifer Hale voicing your handler and David Hayter voicing the Colonel. As the game progresses, you hear memories of conversations between the two, revealing more of the narrative context, seeing what drives the Colonel, and revealing some uncomfortable history regarding your handler. 

Feel the Feedback

Synapse also does a magnificent job justifying its existence as a PSVR2 exclusive, making substantial use of the PSVR’s adaptive triggers and headset haptic. Pushing the triggers gently to move an exploding barrel and then tightening your grip to blow it up is a pleasure every single time you do it. When enemies shoot at you the rumble in your headset not only alerts you to being shot but helps provide directionality, helping you pinpoint the direction of your assailant. Pulling armor off the larger enemies to make them vulnerable to your bullets is a truly immersive, satisfying experience, both empowering you and making you really feel like you’re pulling hard to take that damn armor off.

Even the PSVR’s eye tracking is put to use, making the UI interactions incredibly fluid and intuitive, as well as enhancing the accuracy of your telekinesis. Synapse is designed to take advantage of the PSVR’s unique features, and it shows. 

Perpetual Pathways

The only real criticism of Synapse, and this can almost be considered praise, is that, as with most VR roguelikes, its longevity is questionable, and I want MORE of it..much more. 

Your run through the Colonel’s mind takes place across 9 levels To their credit, nDreams have used a clever narrative device, which I won’t spoil, to provide you with enough impetus to want to finish at least three runs, since it’s only really then that the full story is revealed to you.

So, although the gameplay in Synapse loops back with greater difficulty, as most roguelikes do, the narrative itself carries forward across those three runs, making each run narratively, if not mechanically unique, and giving you a compelling reason to play through at least two more runs after you’ve finished your first. Overall, and taking that into consideration, the game should take you around 10-12 hours to complete, given that you’ll more likely than not die a few times. 

We tried to ask about any plans for upcoming add-ons or DLCs, but if nDreams have any post-launch plans, they’re keeping them close to their chest, so we’ll have to wait, hope, and see. 

Neural Nirvana

In case the review hasn’t made it abundantly clear by now, Synapse is an incredibly well-built VR action game for PSVR2, and a ridiculously easy game to recommend to any action or shooter fans who have a PSVR2. With incredible visuals, delicious use of the PSVR2’s special features, and gameplay that makes you feel like a badass mercenary with Jedi powers, the perfect polish of the UI is just the icing on the cake.

Having played the game to completion, we feel it would be fair to describe Hubris as “a narrative-driven sci-fi shooter that utilises a range of made-for-VR mechanics to create a varied gaming experience spanning a range of beautifully crafted futuristic landscapes. From platforming sections to underwater missions and even a fast-paced hoverbike sequence, Hubris will keep players wondering what’s next as they battle their way across a hostile alien world..”

Sounds cool, right?

It would also, and without contradicting any of the above in any way, be completely fair to describe Hubris as “the gaming equivalent of watching a remarkably physically attractive person completely misunderstand the concept of fun and then spend six hours explaining to you why they are the most fun person they know.”

Let’s unpack that, shall we…

GOOD LOOKING… ON PAPER

Hubris begins with the player embodying a character known only as “recruit,” a newbie cadet joining an intergalactic law enforcement organisation known as the “Order of Objectivity.” Rather quickly, your routine transfer to your training facility goes awry. With only the most cursory of establishing narrative, you begin to navigate a strange alien environment steeped in an entirely theoretical mystery.

The story then proceeds to methodically expose itself throughout a 5-6 campaign. As you make your way through the game, you will encounter a trio of characters who, despite being well-voiced and reasonably animated, somehow collectively carry the emotional resonance of a single beige sock. 

While each narrative section makes sense in context and serves to progress the campaign, the dialogue is dull. In fact, the entire story feels as though it was designed entirely to set up a series of missions rather than creating the sense of foreboding intrigue that the game seemed to be aiming for. The story vaguely hints at something deeper in the final chapter but never explains it, perhaps as a setup for a sequel. Up until then, it would be fair to summarise the entire narrative as “Oh no! Bad guys!”

STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE

Throughout the game, the player will switch from straight combat to platforming in a way that makes perfect sense for the flow of the gameplay. The only issue is; both the jumping and grabbing mechanics are so inconsistent and unrealistic that they demean any sense of immersion gained by the rest of the game.

The jumping feels weightless, occupying a physics system that feels distractingly alien, even considering the extraterrestrial context. Grabbing clearly marked edges in mid-air is so hit-or-miss as to become a masterclass in frustration, although it fares slightly better on PSVR2 for some inexplicable reason. Mixing the gameplay by interspersing platforming sections amidst the combat missions is a great idea, but it’s let down by the poor execution of the jumping and grabbing mechanics. 

Also mixed into the proceedings are some underwater sections. Thankfully these are a great success. Swimming works well, and the gear change in play style accompanying these sections is rewarding and engaging. These sections really highlight the potential of the varied gameplay the developers were going for. Had the other sections been equally well delivered, things might have been different for Hubris.

PRETTY…PRETTY EMPTY THAT IS

Despite all the sub-genres stuffed into its missions, Hubris remains, at its heart, a sci-fi shooter. If this core conceit had been delivered to a class and standard that matched its presentation, all other criticisms would have paled against a set of basics done well. Unfortunately, as a shooter, Hubris feels vain and shallow.

Players quickly acquire a starting weapon, a humble space blaster that can be upgraded by an infuriatingly slow collecting and crafting system. This system also allows players to transform their beloved pew pew into a broadly ineffectual semi-automatic or what is, quite possibly, the worst shotgun yet to grace VR. With the expanded arsenal quickly proving lacklustre, players will find that the bulk of the action is best serviced with the rather mundane but well-upgraded starter weapon.

Thankfully, the range of enemies you will face hardly requires an audacious arsenal to be dispatched, so that starting pistol should do you just fine. The variety of enemies is slim, as is the, and I’m being generous here, ‘AI’ that drives them. Although not as bad as the likes of Gambit, flanking enemies felt far easier than it should be, and much of the action felt reminiscent of Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge.

That is not to imply that combat is terrible. There were definitely a few of the less linear combat sections that had me enjoying myself, but it did all feel like something that we have already seen, and a few years ago at that. Couple that with the lack of grenades, drones, shields, or anything creative or interesting to bring to the combat, and you have an action game that feels disappointingly one-dimensional.

OOOOOH, SHINY

Let’s not beat around the bush; Hubris is a good-looking game.

In fact, it’s the type of game that makes you realise how far developers have come since the Quest 2 was initially released. From the futuristic internal environments to the cavernous underwater sections and onto the strange alien skies of the twin planets, the world of Hubris is an impressive sight to behold.

There is some artifacting around the hands, and sometimes the heads of characters, which is mildly distracting, and the surface water effects don’t quite match the insane standards set in Breachers, but overall Hubris occupies a place at the top tier of what players can visually expect from the Quest 2. The art direction is clear and consistent, and the visual world-building is far superior to its narrative counterparts. In terms of visuals, there is much to appreciate and very little to complain about.

On PSVR2, the graphics clearly outshine those on the Quest 2, which is to be expected. Hubris also benefits from superior haptics.

The sound design in Hubris also speaks to a game with high production values. The sound effects are consistent with the world, and most would feel at home in a high-budget sci-fi film. Some of the critter sounds are a little weak, particularly when compared to the masterful work of games like Crashland, and there is little in the way of ambient sounds in the bigger open areas. But overall, the sound design complements the graphics well, and the two elements together go a long way to distracting you from the gameplay issues, successfully putting some glossy lipstick on our hubristic little pig.

IF LOOKS COULD KILL   

Hubris has a list of features and gameplay mechanics that should make it one of the most engaging single-payer VR games of all time – had they been done well. But, perhaps fittingly for a game called Hubris, it seems that pretty graphics and a laundry list of features were assumed to be enough to satiate players. They aren’t.

The general concept of mixing climbing, swimming, platforming, and driving sections with a traditional linear action game is brilliant. In fact, the pure potential of using all of these techniques to fuel an epic story-driven adventure is intoxicating. However, when compared with the various best-in-class mechanics that already exist in each of these auxiliary genres, Hubris sadly proves that being a jack of all trades but master of none is not an ideal proposition for a VR action game.