Quantum Break

Sam Lake and Remedy Entertainment have given us the broody noir epic of Max Payne and the surrealist Stephen King inspired Alan Wake. Both are great action games which blend in various dynamic elements. Quantum Break proposed the concept of blending an epic time-bending action thriller with a TV show that altered depending on the choices you made in the game. This was a compelling idea that would deliver more of an engaging story without having to present prolonged cut scenes but still bring in a highly intense action experience. Many elements work rather well while many others, sadly, don’t.

You play as Jack Joyce, courtesy of the efforts of Shawn Ashmore, who becomes involved in time travel gone wrong when his friend Paul, played by Aiden Gillen, goes into the future and sees the end of the world. Jack develops super powers and becomes entangled within a massive conspiracy lead by an older and deranged future version of Paul. Jack must race against the clock with the aid of double agent Beth to stop Paul and the end of time itself.

There are plenty of enthralling moments that drive a fantastic story. The pacing is excellent, breaking up action with some meaningful storytelling and, for the most part, characters are engaging and sympathetic. But, there are moments to Quantum Break’s method of storytelling I found particularly lacking i.e. the TV show.

The episodes played out at the end of each level show some superb acting talents from many of the cast, with Aidan Gillen providing such gravitas in his performance as the alluring and unforgettable villain you grow to respect, fear and pity. Shawn Williamson, Lance Reddick and Courtney Hope also do a good job, but while they are strong leads and supports, many other characters are painfully dull, uninteresting or just plain unlikable. Such as the cardboard personality field manager of Monarch or the cocky tech assistant who has a thing for coasters and delivers tacky, lame jokes.

Not to mention the pacing is extremely slow with long winded exchanges that serve no purpose with a budgeted production that feels cold and sterile. The terrible action sequences feel so stilted and poorly executed. Having extreme close ups in fight scenes or car chases under 30 mph is anything but exciting. It’s an interesting idea, but sadly the show just fumbles around and doesn’t live up to the excitement of the actual game. It fails to sustain interest long enough to survive the 22 minute run time of the episode. I don’t know why the episodes couldn’t have been made into cut scenes or moments where you can actually play the game.
I wasn’t also a fan of the overly-long and tedious text logs scattered across the game to give you more “depth” of the world and characters. There are just too many of them, while being so easy to miss. Worst of all, when the game asks you to stop playing and spend a good few minutes reading a document, you come across one right next to it.

So, how does the action hold up? A lot better thankfully. Quantum Break has some visually spectacular displays when the action kicks off, with high-end particle effects and beautiful displays of motion that help to create a distinctive and energetic graphical representation. From the light strokes, waves created by moving objects and the looping stutters, it all looks amazing, adding to the high aesthetics. But it also presents a rather haunting horror element as well, isolating the player within a situation where they have no control and must do everything they can in order to survive brutal encounters. It adds an overwhelming amount of tension and creates an immersive action experience that looks glorious.

Quantum Break is indeed an intense and intelligent shooter with a range of different powers at your disposal that evolve new tactics as you progress. This makes manoeuvres such as flanking enemies not only easily accessible but rather more enjoyable to watch and perform. It’s fast, fluent and very engaging as you can deal massive amounts of damage with a time blast or charge a barrage of gun fire into a single powerful blast capable of taking out the most hardened of enemies. What Quantum Break does fail to present is a steady rise in difficulty and rather just throws everything at you in most of these encounters. This results in the game sticking to the same pacing of difficulty throughout and by the end it doesn’t really raise the stakes high enough to change the nature of play.
You’ll also see that by the halfway mark, you’ll just repeat the same tactics and manoeuvres and encounter the same situations and fire fights you’ve played before. It introduces very little as the game progresses apart from some heavy duty NPCs and the end boss battle is very disappointing, as well as the bland and lazily designed levels present.

But Quantum Break shows its intelligence in the form of several large scale puzzles and set pieces that involve quick thinking, fast reflexes and keen platforming. The larger set pieces involve the massively chaotic stutters destroying the landscape and with Jack having to traverse them. Moments where a ship crashes into a bridge is both a spectacle to watch and rather entertaining to engage. Yet, there are much smaller obstacles resorting to simple door puzzles or rewinding time to particular places for the right moment when, say, a door was open, or an object was moved to a different position. It’s extremely lazy and makes little sense to rewind time especially when you could just simply open the door barring your path.

The game’s running time is also pretty short and the replay-ability factor isn’t very strong. With just standard game time and no episodes, it’s about 7 hours, even with the dynamic changes, known as Junctions, which allow the player to take on the role of the main villain and choose different paths within the game. This is quite an interesting concept, but it ultimately fails as the game doesn’t branch out as much as you may think, what with only minor cosmetics changes taking place in the episodes and main game. Worse still, no matter the choices you make, the ending is still the same, removing any chance of really pushing the player to go for another playthrough.

Quantum Break was an exciting concept with good pacing, intelligent action, interesting gameplay concepts and narrative elements. Sadly it’s a big let-down, weighted heavily by the lame TV show aspect, short playtime, needless padding of backstory and rather shallow puzzle and level designs. It’s a decent game worth checking out, but there are far better games worth your money. Gears of War 4, I’m sure, will be one of them.

+ Intense and Intelligent action gameplay
+ Visually stunning
+ Superb acting from a majority of the cast

- Flawed and dull TV show aspect
- Repetitive while never raising the bar as the game progresses
- Fairly short with little replay value