Inconsistent and ultimately disappointing
Quantum Break is slightly broken. It isn’t a mess. It isn’t unplayable. The game play is entirely serviceable and it functions without bugs. When I say is ‘slightly’ broken, I mean that Quantum Break is not a synchronized product. The various parts that have been put together to make ‘Quantum Break’ the video game/tv experience individually range between 'below average' to 'good' but collectively they do not fulfill the potential or ambition that is otherwise clearly evident.
Quantum Break was obviously made with a great deal of love. There are some excellent ideas and some of them have been executed well (some of the time) but the game's systems and components don't mesh together properly. It all works, just about, but you get the feeling that it doesn't work in the way that might have originally been conceived.
You play as Jack Joyce, brother to a mad scientist, and friend to an 'evil' corporate megalomaniac. It isn't exactly clear what background Jack Joyce himself is supposed to have but such details are not vital to the plot as you are quickly thrown into a sci-fi tale filled with questions about quantum causality, time-looping, and general doomsday prophecies about 'THE END OF TIME'.
Like other time travelers before him, Joyce (Shawn Ashmore) knows his way around both fist and gun fights. Unlike VanDamme in Timecop or Hamilton in Terminator; he's not an expert in either of these things. In fact, without the 'chronon-powers' he inherits , Jack is probably supposed to be just a regular guy. It is never made clear, and Jack's Joyce character and motivations on the whole ring a bit hollow throughout the entire game.
Graphically, there are a not-insignificant amount of issues that do not create a good first impression (ghosting, frame rate drops, inconsistent texture quality, and a weird film grain effect that could be a stylistic choice but could also be an attempt to obfuscate other visual imperfections). Over the duration of the game, I'd have to concede that certain sequences and locales do look great though. Some of the lighting and environmental destruction is really cool in conjunction with the overall stop-start time stutter elements. Environments are also re-used, with areas often being played through at least twice. However, given the time travel nature of the story that's probably not an unreasonable thing.
The sound design during combat sequences is noteworthy, and adds to the intensity. However, this is let down somewhat by loose (swimmy) controls for the gun combat and the limited variety of poorly differentiated weapons. The use of powers, while pretty cool in and of themselves, only begin to mesh well with the gun play once you realize and embrace the fact that this game is not an archetypal cover shooter. There is a dynamism and flow to the combat that emerges once key powers are acquired. This is occasionally really neat, and there is one combat sequence later in the game where time stutters, to cause opponent types to alternate mid fight that was really well done. However, by the end of the game, the novelties of Quantum Break's combat mechanics wear out their welcome to the point of getting stale and repetitive.
The story set up is intriguing but the narrative delivery throughout is very disjointed. The characters, and the way they are developed through the story is very weak, especially when you consider that this is a game that contains dedicated TV footage within it. Much has been made of the cinematic sequences to this game but there are only four 20-minute segments that intersperse the game play chapters. 80 minutes would perhaps be enough to tell a film-length story, but it is not enough to tell one that is set up in the style of an episodic cable tv-show. Quantum Break's FMV falls into the latter category of cable TV presentation and so suffers from a feeling of being overly rushed. So much so in fact that is hard to follow the primary thread of what is going on within each episode. Reading the collectibles helps to fill in the gaps but it feels counter-intuitive to have to stop and absorb bridging narrative through audio logs, in-game e-mails, and other collectibles, when there is a "TV show" right in the middle of the game that should be delivering it instead!). The confusion over what is actually happening in these episodes in the first place makes it even harder to see how what parts of the TV show and broader story might have been influenced in any meaningful way by player actions and choices.
One of the lead characters likes to regularly repeat the mantra that "time is set and you can't change what happens". After one full play through it seems probable that this kind of rigidity in events also applies to the story as experienced by the player. Player choices don't appear to lead to significant deviations in narrative outcome but honestly, after one play through I don't feel motivated to play the game again to find out either way.
There's something genuinely intriguing about the idea of Quantum Break, but there's just too much disappointment with certain components of it for me to recommend it to anyone. The disappointment is further compounded by how poorly the components come together.
With all said and done, it would be fair to conclude that it is a *bad* game overall, but I must admit that at times I had some fun playing certain parts of it. 3/5.
