Quantum Break review by Tyson

Overall

Pass

     Time traveling is always a hard subject to tackle correctly and in most cases it ends up with many plot holes. Remedy Entertainment has decided to try their take on the time traveling with Quantum Break but sadly I found the game to be very boring and no time traveling will ever fix that.


Gameplay

     Time traveling stories always seems to be a bit weird and Quantum Break is no exception. Quantum Break's story revolves around time traveling gone wrong and causing time itself to break apart. It is up to our playable character Jack Joyce to locate this invention made by his brother so he can fix this mess. An old friend Paul Serene also wants this invention to try and fix the time problem his way. This is the main setup of the story and it's basically Paul's way of fixing time vs Jack's way of fixing time. Overall I didn't have much interest in the story but I did like how lots of little tidbits of story are told through interact-able items like computers or radios. At specific parts in the game you get to choose between one of two different story outcomes that can change some story elements and that is pretty neat.

     The gameplay mechanics in Quantum Break didn't do anything to make the game more enjoyable for me. Combat in the game is a generic third person cover shooter. You can hide behind various waste high objects and peek out of cover to shoot various enemies. I found the guns in the game to be very disappointing. Shooting pistols, shotguns, or rifles is very generic for a game about time traveling. Why couldn't we have some futuristic style weapons. I also found the various bullet sponge style enemies like the machine gun guys to be boring to fight as well. Where the game tries to make combat enjoyable is with Jack's time powers. You can do things like freeze an enemy in place or quickly run around the environment to avoid enemy fire or to punch an enemy. The time power stuff is a neat idea but it didn't do anything to make the combat enjoyable for me.

     Maneuvering and interacting with the games world is decent at best. Most of the puzzles are simple kill all enemies or interact with some item to open a locked door to progress. A few spots in the environment you will need to do some climbing and platform jumping. These parts are decent and the game will mix in the time effects here in a decent way. You will need to time a run to avoid some death trap or maybe rewind time a bit to create a walkable platform. While this is a neat feature it is also ruined by things like several death trap time puzzles in a row with no check points in between. Several times in the game I died to one of these death trap style puzzles and was sent way far back due to a sloppy checkpoint system.

     I think the worst part of the game was that I was constantly getting bored throughout the game. Getting into fire fight after fire fight got boring. Using the same time powers again and again in the same way got boring. Even watching the games full motion video segments at the end of an act was boring as well. These video segments could last up to 20 minutes which was way to long and they felt like I was watching a bad show on the Syfy channel.


Control

     The control setup in Quantum Break is good. The controls are setup like any other action game. You use the left analog for character movement while the right analog is used for camera movement. The directional pad is used for switching weapons while the rest of the buttons do actions like jumping, interact with objects, or using your various time powers.


Graphics

     Something always felt weird about how the character models looked in the game. I am not sure what I can place that on but the look of the characters just felt weird for me. Thankfully the world environments looked good and I did like some of the graphical effects used with the games time mechanics. Seeing some chair float in the air is pretty cool.


Sound

     Again another good area for Quantum Break. I felt that the voices actors did a good job and I liked each of the characters voices. Background music was okay but the sound effects are great. Guns firing and various environment effects sound great.