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Quantum Break is available now on Xbox One, Steam (Direct X11) and Windows 10 Store (DirectX 12),and shows Remedy Games certainly know how to capture the true essence of single-player story-driven games with their earlier titles like Max Payne 1 & 2 and the more recent Alan Wake games. Granted, not the biggest studio out there and games tend to be released every few years, but quality over quantity is always appreciated.
I remember being quite jealous of Xbox One owners after seeing Quantum Break‘s promotional material and was listed as exclusive to the console. Then news came about (much like Alan Wake) that Quantum Break was finally heading to Windows 10-only PCs via the Windows 10 store. There was a bit of an uproar from PC gamers as it was DirectX 12 only, upsetting a lot of PC gamers understandably, especially those that are wanting to stay on Windows 7. So now, as of 30th September, Remedy/Microsoft Game Studios have finally released Quantum Break on Steam and using DirectX 11, which opens up the game to users of Windows 7 or newer.
Quantum Break is a great bit of Sci-Fi storytelling: you start out by arriving at a university science centre to help an old friend out with an experiment after your brother has gone missing. It turns out that the experiment involves time travel (sorry, no Doc Brown or DeLorean!), and you’re asked to help your old friend perform the first live test. Of course, alarm bells go off, but you flick the switch anyhow and a duplicate of your old friend appears to say hi. Much like Half Life, messing with stuff you don’t know about isn’t the best idea without a full compliment of staff, and things start going awry quickly, creating fractures in time after your missing brother shows up trying to stop the experiment, gun in hand. So now, it is up to you to sort out what is going on with help from individuals you meet during the course of the game – thing is, you have been affected by the experiment, and you now have the ability to distort and control time, slow bullets down, temporarily hold enemies in place, manipulate objects by reversing time and so on.
After the opening events, you and your brother have to make good your escape but unfortunately, there is a company helping fund these experiments and like all videogame evil corporations, they have their own private army to try and stop you!
The gameplay, in the most basic of terms, is a third-person cover-based action adventure, much like Uncharted and so on, but with time-bending abilities. You’ll find yourself being led down open corridors, through facilities into larger open areas where you just know a large-scale gunfight is going to take place. Enemy numbers are quite high, so this is where you need to use your new-found abilities on crowd control. As an example, you will come across a heavily-armoured shotgun user during the second act, so I found charging up the time freeze attack to damage the enemy a fair bit, initially, and then hitting them a second time with the time freeze and emptying a clip into them to finish them off.
There are also various explosive barrels dotted about, items suspended in air that a well placed shot will cause to drop and barrels that, when hit, can freeze enemies for a short time. It makes the combat quite tactical and thoughtful; you could shoot a pulley holding a load of board, which then drops and can kill enemies, but you could push forward, forcing enemies away from you and then rewind time and make the same item drop a second time, and so on. This time-rewind ability is a really neat feature and introduces a few light puzzles. Towards the end of Act 2, you have to make your way through a shipyard where the main protagonist has released the items holding a ship in place, leading to rewinding time and using dash etc. to get through it.
Each level has plenty items to collect, snippets of information in emails and voice recordings. There are also small Chronos (time) – beads of light for the want of better words. If you collect these Chronos fractures, then the live action series that plays between each episode will have a few extra scenes signalled by a yellow pulsating icon on the upper right of the screen. There are also a few decisions that you are forced to make during the course of the game which will affect the overall outcome of the levels ahead. Collecting these items also give you points to spend on updating your time abilities such as longer freeze, where your shield can absorb more bullets and so on, so it is worthwhile having a look about to see what you can find.
Visually, the game is excellent. Much like Alan Wake and American Nightmare, a lot of work has been put into the motion-captured characters to the environments. I can honestly say the characters are some of the best I have ever seen in a game to date. I do feel though, at times, that the colours look a little washed out and pale, as if the contrast is set to high (I assure you my monitor is set correct). It is not an issue as such, though. and I have also read after looking into the Windows store version that this DirectX 11 version is running a whole lot better than the earlier DirectX 12 version, especially for Nvidia users. I’m running this on an i7 4790K, 8Gb RAM & Sapphire Radeon R9 380 Nitro (4Gb Vram); settings are 1080p and high detail, and my framerate runs between 40-50 FPS, so nicely smooth.
I personally prefer playing games like this using a controller over keyboard and mouse, and my wired Rock Candy Xbox One controller does the job nicely, so the choice on control is down to personal preference. The download size is 36Gb but, unpacked, it is a whopping 68Gb so make sure you have plenty free space on your hard drive. I’m not 100% sure if the live-action episodes are included in the main download or streamed as per the Windows Store version. However, I liaised with another user and the video folder is 6Gb larger on the Steam release, so a bit more investigation is needed.
I mentioned live action episodes that have been filmed and close out each act. You’ll make a decision and be told what the world percentage is at for the choice you make and then you can sit back for 20 minutes watching the story unfold like a TV drama filling in the gaps. This is why the motion capture is a big thing as there are some decent stars acting, such as Aiden Gillen (Game of Thrones), Shawn Ashmore (X-Men), Dominic Monaghan (Lord of the Rings Trilogy) & Lance Reddick (John Wick, American Horror Story) and quite a few other known faces from TV and Film.
Overall, Quantum Break is a great game – superb storytelling, nice visuals, decent TV-style episodes with some excellent acting talent. You can get a few playthroughs out of it with the decisions you have to make, to see what the different outcomes will have on the levels, on the here and now, but Remedy have elected to have just the one ending.
There is no multiplayer at all on this game – it is entirely a single-player experience. I am not a huge multiplayer gamer (dipping into Destiny & Star Wars Battlefront, mainly for an hour or two) so having just a single-player experience is quite refreshing.
If you liked Alan Wake & the Max Payne games then this is definitely one to be picking up.
Thanks to those Youtube channels featured for the gaming footage.
Quantum Break is out now on PC and Xbox One.
Important info:
- Developer: Remedy
- Publisher: Microsoft Games Studios
- Players: Single player
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GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT |
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Director: Stobe Harju
Writers: Sam Lake, Cam Rogers, Ross Berger and Tyler Burton Smith
Music: Petri Alanko
Cast:
Jack Joyce: Shawn Ashmore
Paul Serene: Aidan Gillen
William Joyce: Dominic Monaghan
Martin Hatch: Lance Reddick
Beth Wilder: Courtney Hope
Liam Burke: Patrick Heusinger
Amy Ferraro: Amelia Rose Blaire
Nick Masters/Jack Joyce Prototype #1: Sean Durrie
Dr. Sofia Amaral: Jacqueline Piñol
Clarice Ogawa: Jeannie Bolet
Clarice Ogawa/Various Characters: Jules de Jongh
Jack Joyce Prototype #2: Gethin Anthony
Beth Wilder Prototype: Erin Richards
Prototype Guard: Oliver Hollis-Leick
Retro at heart and lover of all things ’80s, especially the computers, the music and the awesome movies and TV shows! Crazy huge retro gaming collection spanning the ’80s and ’90s with hundreds of tapes, discs and carts for various machines on top of a 600+ strong Steam library that is ever-growing. No I am not a serial hoarder, just a dedicated retro gamer!
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