Now Playing: Quantum Break

When I finished playing Quantum Break I honestly felt like I’d spent more time watching the game than actually playing it. I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure that the majority of my 14 hours with the game wasn’t spent watching live action or in-engine cut scenes. It probably wasn’t even half. But it sure did feel like it.

Quantum Break is a third person action game. You play as Jack Joyce, who arrives in the city of Riverport to assist an old friend with a time travel experiment. Needless to say, things don’t quite go to plan and the experiment triggers a cataclysmic chain of events that threatens to destroy time itself.

On the upside, Jack gets cool time powers that let him rewind time – at least, in very specific, puzzle related scenarios – create time ‘bubbles’ for protection or offence, move (dodge) faster than a speeding bullet and, uh, see in time ‘vision’ which doesn’t really make sense, but it does let you highlight enemies and interactive objects / collectibles throughout the environment.

The gameplay is essentially split between two modes – combat and exploration. In the exploration sequences you’ll move through a fairly linear environment, read or listen to various pieces of media, follow an expository npc and occasionally solve a time related puzzle.

But, unfortunately, the game doesn’t really evolve the time puzzles beyond the initial ‘rewind time to create a new (old) pathway’ type of scenario. It’s a real shame, because I was hoping the puzzles would evolve and become more elaborate and thoughtful as the game progressed and Jack’s range of powers expands. But they never do.

And this, sadly, also applies to the combat which also doesn’t evolve in terms of the enemies you fight or the way you apply your powers. Enemies consist of – guy with gun and no helmet, guy with gun and helmet, big guy with big gun and helmet, and big guy with big gun and better helmet. And that’s it.

The most interesting thing the game does with an enemy type is a variation of the big guy with a portable ‘temporal dampener’ that can restrict the use of your special abilities. But this ‘bubble’ only extends a short way around the big guy, so it’s pretty easy to just hang back and shoot him in the head at range.

The game teases a potential unique and interesting enemy type called a ‘shifter’ which I won’t explain because I don’t want to spoil things, but you never actually get to fight one. And then the game ends with a pretty lame final ‘boss’ fight which just involves shooting waves of bad guys whilst the boss continually teleports ‘time bombs’ behind you, forcing you to keep moving or instantly die, at least on the Hard setting.

Between each wave you can take a single shot at the boss because he’s become ‘weak’ or something. You do this about three times and then he decides to die. It’s about as dumb and unexciting as it sounds.

I don’t want to shit on the combat too hard though because it does have its moments. There are times when it’s actually really fun to tear your way through an entire squad of enemies using your guns and abilities. The problem is, the game doesn’t really let you go to town with the full range of your skills until the last couple of chapters.

Visually, Quantum Break looks pretty good. The environmental destruction is neat, but I’d recommend turning off the resolution upscaling because it blurs the f**k out of the graphics and the game runs fine without it.

Purely from a gameplay perspective, Quantum Break feels a little disappointing. There’s so much more they could have explored with Jack’s time powers both in and out of combat. Nothing really evolves. Not the puzzles, not the way you utilise your powers in combat, not the enemies or the unique ‘junction point’ story choices. It feels like a lot of wasted potential and it’s pretty frustrating because there’s one aspect of Quantum Break that I didn’t think I’d like, but actually ended up enjoying quite a lot – the story.

I actually gave a shit about Jack and the other characters he meets. All the time travel stuff is fun and handled in a way that’s logically consistent within the game world. Although I’d say Control (which is a kind of but not quite sequel to QB) is a better game to play, I do think Quantum Break tells a more compelling story.

I didn’t even mind the live action TV ‘episodes’. They’re actually pretty well done and they do a good job of making you care about some side characters you wouldn’t otherwise know or have much interest in. That said, the game really drops the ball at the end.

There’s no final episode showing you what happens to these characters. Given that they feature so prominently in the live action sequences, that’s a really bizarre decision. I didn’t think I’d care for the live action episodes before playing but to my surprise, they kind of won me over. And then, after watching them all, the game doesn’t give you any resolution to those characters.

But, to be fair, it doesn’t give you much resolution for Jack, either. The ending is pretty abrupt and feels like it’s just leaving hooks for a potential sequel. You can get away with that, but you need to be sure you’ve wrapped up the story you’re telling now to a satisfying degree too. And Quantum Break doesn’t quite manage that.

Overall, I liked Quantum Break. It’s a decent game I’d recommend picking up on sale. I liked the characters and the story and all the cool time travel stuff. But the game does feel like a whole lot of wasted potential. It could have done so much more with the combat, puzzles, exploration and choice. I don’t know if a sequel will ever happen, but it does and the developers actually expand and evolve upon the mechanics here, it could really be something special.

6/10