Quantum Break (2016)

I generally enjoyed my time with Quantum Break the movie, but not Quantum break the game. I really liked the presentation, characters, and (convoluted) story.

The game aspects were severely weak. This should have been an “Uncharted” where the story and set piece action carried it even though the gameplay was fairly average. Instead, the game had only 4 powers and too much repetition to make it fun. Even worse, there were bad guys that were immune to some of your powers, thus further reducing your options in certain situations.

Still, I would give Remedy another chance. I am curious about Control and would like to see them continue to iterate and make a truly fantastic game.

I am glad I knew what I was in for when I started playing. Half-game, half-TV series with a 75 GB download upfront to get the 30 minute cut scenes. It would be easy to say "I am not going to put up with this"

Overall it is decent; I am entertained. Now that I see their newest game Control, I can see what they were going for. The action is stylish when you use the powers. However, I haven't got a good feel for how to combine them. I would have loved if they did more with melee or stealing weapons. The gunplay is fine but not the satisfying element of it.

The graphics are incredible and the character are models are excellent. I love all the time effects with shattered glass and streaking lights.

The characters are really intriguing and the branching story is an decent gimmick. The actors do a good job of portraying them and I actually look forward to the 30 minute shows. Again, it really helped I knew what I was in for. The overall story is kind of "huh, whatever". There is some cliché bad guy stuff but the actors can turn the mediocre plot into something better than it should be.

8.5/10

I wasn't sure what I'd feel towards the idea of having a show within the game, because even though it's optional, it is important to the narrative as a whole. In a game that focuses so much on story, it would seem counterproductive to avoid that. Luckily, I started to get really into the show because it was a competent thriller with good actors that didn't phone it in because it's a video game. The same can be said for the voice acting in the game sections. Good stuff.

I think the time travel story was fine, and always interesting, but I would have rated this game a little higher if I was invested in the characters. With Max Payne, I was all in and his path of revenge was glorious. Here, the plot moves at a brisk pace but nobody is really that deep.

I have a lot of faith in Remedy. Some have criticized the shooting but I think it's satisfying and they didn't get bogged down in having a million guns; they kept it simple. The cover system is really not that intrusive but he didn't always take cover when I wanted. A minor gripe, and another one is that it seems like when you're firing at an enemy you can hit them over and over and they become bullet sponge-y. I understand distance makes it harder to hit them but it was weird to me because few games feel like that, and it indicated that I was hitting them. I guess it encourages you to get closer.

But the powers are fun! They're not totally original but they're like a melting pot of other games, so I have no issues there at all. There are upgrades but it's a pretty simple system.

Visually, it's pretty astounding. The models are wonderful, but what I'm talking about is the artistic design of the environments when everything starts glitching. There's a lot of creativity there and colour, so even exploring normal environments is intriguing when everything starts becoming manipulated by time.

So Quantum Break didn't advance the shooter mechanically, but was an interesting experiment. I don't want every game to employ the same strategy and multimedia approach, but it worked for me here.

Edit: Load times were fucking terrible at times though.