I managed to get a copy today and I'm just about to start playing. If anyone has any questions I will try and answer them.

Is the shooting comparable to Max Payne or is it entierly different?

@rethla: The game has a different feel to it than Max Payne. I think the shooting feels good and the powers are satisfying to use so far.

Played a bit myself. Shooting is... adequate, though for a studio that exclusively develop third-person shooters you'd think it'd have a little more kick. The time powers seem really fun so far, especially for how they seemingly have no cooldown so it's much faster paced than a Mass Effect for example. Though what I find weird is how you can't blindfire? Nor can you shoot from the hip, and I don't even think there's a melee attack. Though I expect a time power of some sort will eventually take the position as your 'close-range attack'

Game is INCREDIBLY blurry, which I was really taken aback by. Can't move the camera an inch without everything blurring. I like the characters so far; Shawn Ashmore just has this naturally likeable quality about him, though the ease to which he just goes around shooting down special-ops soldier people is a bit odd. I do like that he references how he's used a gun before, but still. Aidan Gillen doesn't look very good in-game, however. His hair looks like it's a lego piece or something.

Also, the taxi driver at the very beginning is the placeholder Jack Joyce before Ashmore took the spot.

EDIT: After playing a lot more this game is alright. Nothing mindblowing, but it's fun with an intriguing enough story. Your time powers incentivise you to be really aggressive, which I like, and even though it positions itself as a cover-based shooter you don't actually need to take cover very often. On Normal setting at least it's been pretty breezy.

Game is split pretty evenly between combat and exploring around reading emails and such. There's a particularly funny recurring email series that spoofs time travel stories and its confusing logic. Time Knife!

@yummylee: I think the shooting packs a nice punch, it's a step up from Alan Wake in my opinion. I agree with you on Aiden Gillen...he looks good sometimes but strange others.

I also noticed the taxi driver.

Dunno how this question wasen't asked yet:

How/where did you get a copy?

@mcfart: A friend of mine works at a video game retailer and sold me a copy early.

Are you guys playing on PC? If so how is the performance?

I've played a few hours now and I'm really enjoying it (I'm at act 3, episode 2)
The story is interesting, the characters are good and the gameplay is fun. I think the FMV sequences are well done too.

Except for the combat I think it really feels like Alan Wake. There are a lot of areas where you just walk around reading emails and other collectibles to learn more about the story.

I'm on the xbox one.

I think this was answered in the unfinished or something but how did the guy become such a good shooty guy right away?

Im torn on this game but ill probably pick it up (hopefully cheaper) down the line in any case. It does look pretty amazing at least.

@ripelivejam: I forget if it was Drew or Jeff but coming off of some preview of the game, he said the thing about the guy is that he's not a good shooty guy. He's able to take on the enemies because of the powers he has.

No, he is a good shooty guy. He mentions offhand that he's used a gun before as mentioned already, and there's also a file you can read that lists out his criminal record (which if I recall correctly includes GTA and armed robbery) and history with guns, explicitly stating that he's trained at a range with small arms weapons. It doesn't really gel with how Jack is portrayed (which is perhaps just due to Shawn Ashmore's generally nice guy appearance), but it's something.

Performance is solid at 30fps, no drops. EDIT: Sorry, this is for XB1! derp

How has the quality level been for the TV portions (not quality as in performances and such; I mean the actual streaming/video quality) on Xbox One? Also, how good is your internet connection? Despite having somewhat decent internet (albeit with a bandwidth cap that constantly gives me some worry) I am not happy about the idea of counting on a streaming video connection for a video game's super-long cutscenes...

Can you adjust an overall quality setting to reduce bandwidth concerns and improve streaming, or are you stuck with the game trying to always stream ultra-HD quality and are left at the mercy of your internet connection?

My internet is roughly 60mb and unfortunately the TV stuff does run into a lot of buffering... As such when it comes for the live-action stuff I'll pause it to let it all load and can then watch it more seamlessly. I don't think there are any quality settings or anything, though you can alternatively download all of the episodes and watch them straight off your console/PC.

Also, I should add that I think the TV stuff is pretty OK. It's not exactly HBO, and they can look a little flat far as the cinematography goes, but the performances are great and the action scenes are generally well directed.

@yummylee: Bummer. The streaming video is actually the thing that is making me balk at buying the game. Downloading what is reported to be ~75GB of live action video would eat 30% of my monthly bandwidth :-\ (edit: also, if your 60Mb connection has trouble, my 25Mb one will be lousy)

Thanks for the info!

I just finished it and had no problem with the TV stuff at all. Not once did it buffer and I have a shitty 8Mbit line (Norway). Also I can't seem to download the videos yet as it just says "Bundle Only" when I try. Have to wait until tuesday I guess.

Thanks for all the info I'm really looking forward to playing it.

@whitegreyblack: I have a 17Mbit connection and I haven't had a single issue with the video streaming. It looks great.

@dgtlty: I'm playing on the Xbox One and the game looks fantastic, no framerate drops that I have noticed.

@teoball: You've already finished it? Is it crazy short? Sounds like its not worth full price if you beat it in one day.

@pompouspizza: Thanks.

@sterling: It's not any shorter than the average story focused 3rd person shooter. I finished it in two sittings, around 12 hours I think.

@sterling: it's funny, I'm taking my time and reading everything but I'm at 18 hours and 16 minutes and I have just started the last chapter of act 4. There are 5 acts.

Sounds about right with a Remedy game. Alan Wake was surprisingly beefy, as well. Glad the trend continues.

@csl316: Absolutely! As soon as I'm finished with it I'm going to play through it a second time to see the other choices. So far I would say I like the game considerably more than Alan Wake, and I do like Alan Wake a lot. Having said that, the games story lost me completely at a certain point and I didn't understand it at all. I'm not having that problem with Quantum Break, it's compicated but all the information is there for you to find.

I have every collectable so far and if I have one complaint it's that so many important story details are put into optional reading material. It's all really interesting and easy to find but its not the point.

I would recommend finding everything. There are some amazing Easter eggs too.

if you download the tv shows do they still play in order as you play through the game?

@rkofan87: I can't see why they wouldn't but I haven't downloaded them myself.

So, I just completed the game, too. And unfortunately I think everything to do with the ending felt rushed and underwhelming; I was honestly shocked when the achievement for completing the game popped up. I was left saying to myself ''wait... really? This is it?'' The final combat encounter I thought was rather frustrating also, thanks to Paul's constant explosion auras or whatever, which could sometimes be hard to read if you're out of its blast radius or not.

That, and everything to do with Hatch feels unfinished, especially since he's clearly one of these mysterious 'shifters' the game kept referring to but never actually shown. And there wasn't even a postgame 'TV' episode?

I think the game's still alright despite all of that, but I did start feeling fatigued with the combat by the ending sequences. I don't think there's enough time powers or weapons to keep things interesting throughout its run time, and the weird forays into platforming weren't exactly stellar. Honestly I thought that I'd be geared and ready to start again on Hard and to make all of the opposing choices (even though I'm certain their differentiating effects are minimal), but after actually beating the game... It ends on a pretty lousy note to the point where it deflated a lot of my previous enthusiasm. I definitely enjoyed it more than Jeff seemed to anywhoo.

@mcfart: some retailers will sell copies early. Typically they do cash or give copies to friends and dont put the sale through or remove that copy from inventory until midnight.

@yummylee: The inclusion of semi-trial-and-error platforming is actually putting me off of the game. It just doesn't make sense, so I'll need to watch a few sections. Sounds like they made a ton of decisions that break the flow of the game for the worse.

@pompouspizza: thanks.

I've been avoiding everything about this game and just played through the first 2 chapters. I'm really enjoying it so far. The FMV episodes are fantastic and look great being streamed. (xbox one here) It's Alan Wakey for better or worse. I could gush on about the detailed emails and some great eye tracking tech for NPC's...

I really hope this does well enough for Remedy to make another game! I love there weirdness!

@yummylee: I actually liked the ending. I have no idea how to put things in spoiler tags on a phone but I'll just say that I would have liked more of an explanation for a certain character but overall I got answers to everything I wanted. I'm just glad they didn't do what they did with Alan Wake's ending.

Did you find all of the collectables? I did and it's kind of crazy how really important story stuff is put in optional notes and emails.

The game took me 24 hours my first playthrough and I can't wait to go back in on hard.

Sometimes, I'm really glad I held off on getting a cheap pre-order down for PC ports. Here's the emerging picture:

I'd give it some time before even thinking about getting this on PC.

@shivoa: To be fair, he pulled a 180 shortly after and said that performance is fine on max settings. Still weird, and makes you hesitate on jumping on a purchase though. I'll wait and see what other PC review sites say before jumping to any conclusions off one guy's tweet.

PCGH.de has posted their first analysis of the PC port and it looks like an absolute disaster. They're flat out recommending the Xbox version over the PC version in its current state. Here's the graph for the Frametimes on a R9 Fury on 1080p with max details:

Choice quote: "Currently Quantum Break is no fun on a 60-Hz-Display, no matter how strong your graphics card might be."

i remember the alan wake pc port being solid from the start, but then again they had like a year (?) to make it that way. I have a feeling this may have been a tad bit rushed.

Just completed the game on hard difficulty. I liked the shooting and the fighting was fun with the different powers.

Though i am not sure that the live tv show fit that well into the game. It had some cool moments but at times it made the opponent seem like a small time operation since for budgetary reasons they really couldnt show the kind of power that a company of monarchs size should actually have. But it did have few well acted moments and some surprisingly cool action scenes.

One small annoyance i had was with the games tendency to put every save before a cutscene. This meant that if I died in a particular fight I had to wait for about 30+ seconds for the game to load and then skip that cutscene in order to try the part again where i died.

I wish there would have been a bit more powers. Think i maxed out all but 2 of the powers. Because I missed some chronos from the earlier acts.

Didnt really have that many problems with platforming as Jeff seems to have had in his review. Also there isnt really that much platforming in the game. At least the kind of platforming that is somewhat demanding. Most of the stuff is just climping up and down ladders and crates.

@altairre said:

PCGH.de has posted their first analysis of the PC port and it looks like an absolute disaster. They're flat out recommending the Xbox version over the PC version in its current state. Here's the graph for the Frametimes on a R9 Fury on 1080p with max details:

Choice quote: "Currently Quantum Break is no fun on a 60-Hz-Display, no matter how strong your graphics card might be."

This is potentially a bit of a bummer. The Xbox One version has been no graphical tour de force so far (I've played the first act and the only part that impressed me visually was

and I figured on waiting to play the PC version. I guess I'll just stick with Xbox.

@extintor: Really? I think the game looks absolutely stunning, I was constantly stopping to marvel at something. I thought the animation and faces were particularly great.

The way the game looks during time stutters never stopped impressing me. Maybe not technically speaking but I think it's the best looking game I have seen on the Xbox One.

That being said, I have always been a console gamer, maybe if I had been playing PC games this whole time it would be less impressive.

The motion blur. The aliasing. The ghosting. The freezing. The blurry and inconsistent texture quality. The screen-tearing. The frame-rate drops. The film grain overlay (used to obfuscate all of these issues).

These are all things I noticed in the first act of the game. None of them are game breaking-level bad but there are other games on the platform that fare far better visually.

@extintor: The ghosting is very odd looking and I have noticed some screen tearing which is a shame. I haven't noticed any frame rate drops but like I said, I play games on consoles so I'm used to framerates on console games.

I'm 100% PC and Xbox (so far, I've yet to find a good reason to own a PS4 as well... in fact I'd much rather further upgrade my PC at this point than spend anything extra on either console).

The big two current gen consoles are really quite behind visually. There's no getting away from that fact. Of course, great games don't need to have the best visuals though... and I hope I enjoy the rest of Quantum Break regardless.