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[Fbh]

So I recently got a decent PC and one of the Microsoft Exclusives I was really looking forward to play was Quantum Break. I've like all previous Remedy games and this one seemed to have some nice visuals which would be good to test the hardware (since it's not high end I wanted to see how it would handle this...which turned out to be mid settings at 60fps).

Having just finished, I can't help but feel a bit disappointed. I really liked the gunplay and combat and visually it had some really cool moments but the story wasn't as good as I had hoped and the way its told left me confused.

I really like the combat and gunplay in this. I love when shooters push you to move around and try to be agile instead of staying behind a single piece of cover and slowly taking enemies down. The time bending abilities are great and push you toward moving around the battlefield. The Slow motion was amazing in Max Payne back in the day and this felt like an evolution in some ways.

The visuals, even at mid settings, where pretty nice too. The scenes that take place while time is frozen look really cool and I love how reactive a lot of the environment feels (lots of objects that you can move and that react to you hitting them or walking into them, which is nice). But I do think they went a bit overboard with the post processing, the image had a sort of soft look to it that almost didn't make it look like 1080p. I thought it was the mid setting but the pre rendered cutscenes which shouldn't depend on the hardware didn't look any better in that regard.

I don't think the story is particularly bad. I actually liked several of the characters and I'm generally a sucker for time travel stories. But the choices made with the storytelling just seem weird and confusing to me.
If I was going to summarise it into one sentence it would be: There's too much reading.
Now, I don't want to sound like someone who doesn't enjoy reading (It's one of my hobbies and my kindle gets as much use as my consoles) but in a game that has in game cutscenes, in game dialog and "cinematic" moments AND a whole TV show with 30+ minutes episodes in between chapters I couldn't help but feel annoyed about the fact that a lot of the story seemed to be hidden inside pages upon pages upon pages of emails and memos.
I think at one point it just reaches a point where there's not enough interactivity for me. A chapter will end with an in game cutscene, then I watch half an hour or more of a live action show, then the next chapter starts with another cutscene.... all of which is fine, but then when I'm finally in control again I'm expected to spend another 15 minutes in every room going through all the computers and reading like 20 pages of emails each time.

It's specially frustrating because the life action show doesn't feel all that relevant. It's mostly about some side characters and none of them seemed to be very relevant to the overall plot (at least with the choices that I made through the story).
Meanwhile there is all this interesting backstory in the emails which show the motivation behind the actions of a lot of relevant characters and there's a whole conspiracy going on in the background and it's just like.... couldn't the live action show have been about this stuff instead? (plus, more Lance Reddick on screen is never a bad thing. The guys is, as always, great at playing mysterious and morally ambiguous characters)
The whole novelty behind this game was the fact it included a live action show and yet it seems like half of the relevant development of the story are inside lengthy emails and the show itself is borderline filler, which just doesn't make sense to me.


Anyway, it was a fun test of my new PC (well, laptop actually) and I'm glad I got to play it this way since the 60fps made the combat feel really smooth. But it's a shame that the story didn't live up to expectations.

 

[MaximusPayne]

Yeah, I didn't think the story was too engaging. But I agree totally that the graphics and gunplay were good to go.

 

[Soltype]

Story was trash, but the game was good.I played on the hardest difficulty, and it really makes you juggle all your powers.

 

[cereal_killerxx]

I actually really enjoyed the story. It kept me engaged and I loved reading all the emails. Time Knife was my fav LOL

 

[Greatest Ever]

A game that hated its medium and was just a bad time all around.

Except Beth Wilder. She's awesome.

 

[amdb00mer]

I actually really enjoyed the story. It kept me engaged and I loved reading all the emails. Time Knife was my fav LOL

I concur. I also played through it twice to do all the different scenarios and see the changes to some of the live action scenes and to also get that 1000G achievement score.
Either way, I liked the game and it definitely left the door open for a sequel. The whole live action thing was Remedy's idea, not MS. Them trying to push TV/film at the launch of the X1 was just a coincidence. I think if we ever get a sequel it will not have the live action stuff again. That stuff was shot here in Atlanta and was not cheap. It is one of the main reasons the budget ballooned so high.

 

[Alx]

I usually don't care about video game plots and having stuff to read in game, but I loved those aspects in QB.
My opinion is that games in general are ill suited for story telling since the story is a passive, linear experience and a game is open and interactive. QB is a good counter example though, and manages to tell a complex, non linear story through game codes.

 

[V2Tommy]

I found the last boss to be absolutely impossible to beat. I've watched a dozen videos and read lots of posts out there. I simply can't find a place (or timing) where you can survive the one-shot explosion wave thing.

Other than that... love the game in every way.

 

[Raimond]

I just picked this up during Black Friday sale. Been waiting far too long to play it!

 

[Black_Stride]

I found the last boss to be absolutely impossible to beat. I've watched a dozen videos and read lots of posts out there. I simply can't find a place (or timing) where you can survive the one-shot explosion wave thing.

Other than that... love the game in every way.

This happened to me the first time as well.

If you select start new game the game erases your save file.
So i had to start the game again.

The second time i reached the final boss he was easy as shit just using the sprint(i forget what the power is called) whenever he starts charging his one shot blast.

 

[SRTtoZ]

I found the last boss to be absolutely impossible to beat. I've watched a dozen videos and read lots of posts out there. I simply can't find a place (or timing) where you can survive the one-shot explosion wave thing.

Other than that... love the game in every way.

I actually used a trainer on PC to beat the final boss. Its such non sense not that its hard but it doesn't explain the fight at all. I just couldn't be bothered and put in infinite life. Problem fucking solved. Terrible fight.

 

[midasmulligan]

Just started playing this on my xb1x and man, it looks pretty bad. Visual artifacts all over and janky as hell. Gonna stick with it, but after experiencing tomb raider, ACO, and titanfall... this just looks amateur

 

[black_13]

Yea the story was my biggest grip with it. It made me lose interest quick but I may go back and play it and skip the cut scenes. Shame cause I loved the story in all the other Remedy games.

 

[GC_DALBEN]

I actually really enjoyed the story. It kept me engaged and I loved reading all the emails. Time Knife was my fav LOL

Same here, i loved this game, replayed 3 times, 1000 gamerscore

 

[Sosokrates]

Is there meant to be graphical options on the 1X version? Because there isnt on mine.

 

[Anono]

I had some fun moments with it. I liked it visually, despite the critics in this regard and the notable general blurriness, (I played the Steam version, GTX 1060) and I felt the controls worked well. The superpowers were interesting but they could have been used in better ways for sure.
On the other hand, at times I felt I was watching a medium budget series, which plot I could not understand at all, instead of playing a game. In the end, it was an easy and short ride.
So... bittersweet experience for me.

 

[Adam_802]

Ah an excellent (and underrated) gem. I thought the story was deep and great actually,and the combat was some of the best TPS action this generation. Could've done without the TV show parts though.

 

[transformer]

One of my favorite games this gen. I typically don't like time travel stories and enjoyed this one. I enjoyed all the reading much more than the live action components of the story telling. The game is way underrated IMO. Without the live action elements I think it would have been better received.

 

[BigTnaples]

Loved this game. Looking forward to a replay on my X1X. Played the intro and looks worlds better.

 

[EBE]

the live action sections are boring, unnecessary, and a fundamental misuse of the kind of transmedia Lake and his team had so elegantly employed in Alan Wake. there the use of live action show sections, the episodic presentation/structure/, real-world music, and extensive text (again, in fiction and in real world with both the strategy guide and collectors edition accompanying diary) were all relevant and combined to form a synthetic whole, a worthy continuation of the experiments laid down by Max Payne.

the action, what little of it there was, was simply passable. the characters were flat and the narrative predictable and cliche. Quantum Break is Remedy's weakest outing thus far and represents, i think, a huge misstep in several of their core design philosophies.

 

[Soapbox Killer]

Loved just about everything this game had to offer. It was the game that made me buy an Xbox One

 

[Beerman462]

I found the last boss to be absolutely impossible to beat. I've watched a dozen videos and read lots of posts out there. I simply can't find a place (or timing) where you can survive the one-shot explosion wave thing.

Other than that... love the game in every way.

This happened to me the first time as well.

If you select start new game the game erases your save file.
So i had to start the game again.

The second time i reached the final boss he was easy as shit just using the sprint(i forget what the power is called) whenever he starts charging his one shot blast.

This game had a final boss? I guess forgot everything lol

 

[AgentP]

I got to the final boss, but died like three times. Is there a pay off for the excruciating bad fight?

The game overall is meh, 6.5/10. Decent story, but the continuous interrupting you and short gameplay segments ruin it. I also hated the insta-death red things that they never explained well. It felt like a uber linear wanna-be super hero game.

 

[SirKicksalot]

I dropped the final boss to easy. I couldn't wrap my head around the red things either. Turns out the only thing that matters is distance. They'll kill you through walls if you're close enough. In retrospect the fight is not actually bad - there's plenty of time, warning, cover, weapons - but they never explain the red bullshit which goes against all logic.
The ending is alright. It's obviously spoiled from the start of the game anyway.

 

[Deleted member 752119]

I played it back and launch and really enjoyed it. I liked the story and characters and loved the concept of having a live action show intertwined. It was pretty neat to have multiple methods of story telling between the game scenes, e-mails/logs, and the show. The combat was fun with all the powers and the graphics were pretty great.

 

[Muffdraul]

Very rare I start a game and not finish it, normally I take it all the way to the bitter end even if I'm not particularly enjoying myself. QB was a game I stopped about 75% and have no intention of ever going back. It had some of the least fun and most unsatisfying "explore and hunt for power ups" game play I've ever experienced, and whenever it was time to watch an episode of the show I wanted to stab myself in the eyes with a rusty screwdriver.

 

[Valonquar]

Necrobump relevant because I picked it up on Steam Summer sale...

The game was nowhere near as good as Control which came out 3 years later. I guess they wouldn't have gotten to MAKE Control without QB, but still... yech.

Did a single playthrough and found it OKAY, but kind of simplistic. The live action parts felt completely unnecessary, and it was easy to see how little impact they had on the linear storytelling with only one available ending no matter what path you took to get there. Combat never really evolved much, and neither did enemies.

I work as a system administrator, so every time the "IT guy" was on screen I died inside. That was some NCIS level writing right there JEZUS FUCK. "Let's just throw a bunch of random IP addresses on the screen to represent mad haxxorz." I just can't.

I got $10 of fun out of the game, but I feel really bad for anyone that paid full entry price for it at release.

 

[Drew1440]

One of my favorite Xbox exclusives of that generation, also makes me nostalgic for the old Microsoft Surface/Lumia devices that were featured heavily.
Also RIP Lance Reddick.