Review: Ambitious ‘Quantum Break’ runs out of time

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It’s hard to make a great video game.

A million things can go wrong — and often do — between the moment an idea is formed and the day its realization lands in a player’s hands. Technology cracks, developers stumble, producers leave for greener pastures, teams miss deadlines, questionable decisions are made under duress. A great video game is an exception, not the rule.

The same goes for a great TV show. For every The Wire, there are a dozen Cop Rocks. (Okay, there’s only one Cop Rock, but you get the point.)

So consider for a second what developer Remedy and publisher Microsoft were doing when they green-lit Quantum Break. Here’s a video game that’s also a TV show: a cutting-edge, time-bending shooter in which decisions made by the player alter the events of a big-budget, live-action series piped right into the game. And all of this was announced alongside the Xbox One itself.

It was, in a word, insane, and I think we were all rooting for this incredibly ambitious, long-delayed project to usher in a new era of cross-media entertainment. Unfortunately, ambition can’t make up for problematic design, and while Quantum Break manages to live up to its risky premise as a game/show hybrid, the end result is a mediocre SyFy channel pilot baked into a half-cocked Max Payne.

In the game, you‘re Jack Hoyce (competently played by Shawn Ashmore), a man who — after an accident ruptures the space-time continuum — acquires time-shifting powers . As you race around a nondescript Northeastern city trying to stop an apocalyptic chain of events, you’re embroiled in a melodramatic tale of powerful men making terrible business decisions to further the evil machinations of the not-at-all-evil-sounding Monarch corporation.

Mostly, that means running, gunning, and messing with the clock. Quantum Break’s bog-standard third-person gunplay is pleasantly augmented by the time-shifting thing. Jack can lob time bubbles at bad guys, stopping them in their tracks as he unloads clips into the bubble. When it bursts, so do they. Jack can also slow things down (a la Max Payne) to dodge bullets and bust out a few head shots, or stop time entirely and race around punching enemies right in their poor faces.

It has its moments. Stopping time to run across a room and sock a guy in the nose is a solid power fantasy, and as you upgrade powers you will begin to feel a bit of that superheroic inevitability channeled by other (and better) games, like Infamous. And it’s stylish to boot; nifty rippling and cracked glass effects really sell the notion that time is breaking apart.

But mechanically, Quantum Break needs work. Jack snaps into cover automatically — a nice touch — but otherwise he sort of lurches around like a tranquilized bear. Aiming is too loose, and there’s very little differentiation between the half-dozen or so guns inexplicably scattered across every impromptu battlefield. The handful of enemy types are dumb as dirt, too, offering little tactical or strategic resistance over the game’s 10-hour run time.

Quantum Break attempts to add some depth by tasking you with tracking down “Narrative Objects” on each level, often in the form of bizarrely long private emails left open on every laptop (which, in another leap, are lying around everywhere). If reading through overlong emails helps you buy into a video game world, then have at it. But it’s an inelegant way to flesh out a universe. Collecting narrative bits and baubles feels like busywork here.

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(Image: Microsoft)

Other design decisions are equally baffling. Quantum Break employs an irritating checkpoint system that often dumps you back a few scenes too far. The game’s climax is ruined by this, as a checkpoint is set before a cutscene. Try to skip that cutscene, and you have to wait through a lengthy load screen instead. So you die, wait for the game to load, and either wait for another load or watch a cutscene you have watched ten times before. Time travel sucks!

And it’s all just so…bland. Where Max Payne broke ground with its noir style and slick bullet-time, and Alan Wake wowed with its twisting storytelling and interesting light-based survival horror, Quantum Break bores with rote gunplay set in yet another gray, linear world of warehouses and office buildings. For all its time-travel shenanigans, the gameplay doesn’t move the clock ahead much at all.

But the game itself is just half of Quantum Break. At the end of each of the game’s five acts is a half-hour episode of the Quantum Break show. It’s smartly delivered, streamed directly to your Xbox One (or PC, though I did not play that version) without requiring you to leave the game.

The show’s solid cast includes Dominic Monaghan as your scientist brother, Aiden Gillen as your former friend-turned-villain, and Lance Reddick as, well, Lance Reddick. Rather than rehash the events in the game, the show unfolds primarily through the eyes of disgruntled Monarch employee Liam Burke (Patrick Heusinger) and nerdy hacker Charlie Wincott (Marshall Allman). Having the game and show focus on different characters ties the two sides of Quantum Break together into one full experience, and that isn’t an easy trick to pull off.

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(Image: Microsoft)

But again, the source material just isn’t interesting enough to make it worth a watch. Other than Gillen’s conflicted antagonist, the characters are two-dimensional cutouts: the hacker with a heart, the power-hungry businessman, the vengeful brother, the undercooked love story. You’ve seen this show a thousand times before and probably chose to change the channel.

Quantum Break holds a card up its sleeve in the form of Junction Points. These take place just before each episode, giving you brief control over the bad guys as you choose one of two paths forward. Characters will live or die based on your choices here, and while it’s all a bit ham-fisted compared to the nuanced (and more plentiful) choice points in titles from adventure masters Telltale Games, you feel the weight of your decisions in a clever new way since you watch them play out in live action.

Is any of it worth it, however? That’s the question I kept asking myself as I played/watched Quantum Break. This kind of thing only works when you’re invested in the characters and plot, and with little emotional payoff, the branching narrative feels more like a fun gimmick than anything else.

And despite its impressive vision, “gimmicky” is a pretty accurate description of Quantum Break. I give Remedy credit for having the stones to actually follow through on its promise of combining a TV show and a video game, and perhaps there’s indeed a future here. But in a world crammed to the gills with great shows and great games, an experience that does neither particularly well just isn’t worth your precious time.

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What’s hot: Clever game/show integration; time powers are cool; solid performances

What’s not: Dull script; boring world; lacks depth; mechanical issues

Platform reviewed: Xbox One

Ben watched this Cop Rock scene about a dozen times while writing this review. Now he’s on Twitter at @ben_silverman.