Reviews from

in the past


So far this year I've beaten things like Rogue Warrior, Life of Black Tiger, Orc Slayer, Duke Nukem Forever, Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back and much more of equally nonexistant quality. The Quiet Man? It's worse than all of those.

I will go so far to even say that it is my least favorite game I've ever played. I can't call it the worst game of all time as there are many games that are so broken that its impossible to even beat them. However I genuinely wish this was one of those because the 2.99 I spent on this would of had more use in the fucking blender. From story to gameplay to anything else you can think of that makes up a game The Quiet Man completely and utterly fails at.

So to start, the main concept of the game is that since the main character is deaf the vast majority of the game barring the first and last cutscene is nearly completely silent. Only via a second playthrough do you get the option of experiencing the audio, but more on that in a bit. I do think this is actually a really interesting concept but the abysmal execution makes the entire thing fall apart. Firstly there is no subtitles. This is understandable to a degree as you'd naturally assume the whole point of this "mechanic" is that you don't get to hear or understand anything the main character can't. But it doesn't actually work like that. There's maybe one or two instances in the game where anyone uses sign language. The main character very clearly is at the least able to read lips or something of the sort as in every single cutscene he is capable of having conversations and understanding everything being said to him. So why no subtitles? Why does the game open with a message explicitly emphasizing that there are no subtitles. The whole point of the game just completely falls apart because of this. What's worse is that these cutscenes are pointlessly long slog-fests. The game is thankfully only a couple of hours long but so much of it is just spent in these torturously long completely silent scenes of people just fucking talking. Not to mention extended completely silent scenes of a woman singing and playing piano. There are zero interesting visuals to accompany it either, and the framing and composition for the FMVs makes CW shows look like they were filmed by Roger Deakins in comparison. This is all to say that it is fucking boring as god damn motherfucking shit. This would be a great way to get your kids to go to sleep but honestly letting anyone play or watch this is probably highly unethical. And guess what? Knowing the dialogue and story actually makes this even worse. Im convinced that the whole no subtitles thing to make this as unnecessarily cryptic as possible is entirely to mask the fact that the actual story is fuckass. The new game plus audio thing wasnt even in the original game! It had to be patched in because people were rightfully complaining about how miserable this game is. If I'm being completely honest I did not and will not be fully playing this game again to experience the full story. From what i've heard and seen it is so terrible on a base factor (and so easily to tell so from what you're able to piece together of it in your first playthrough) and I highly doubt any new information could possibly save this game. There is some twists near the end and it takes a weird supernatural turn that's just... like I can't even begin to explain it man its just so stupid. In summary the cutscenes are too long, the story is terrible, and the dialogue only makes it worse. But hey, that's only one half of the game. Surely the actual gameplay is better?

The gameplay of The Quiet Man is arguably a dozen times worse than the stupid ass story. It is janky, unpolished and barebones to a laughable degree. There is basically zero explanation to anything, all you have to go off is a really awful menu that just shows symbols instead of just telling you what the buttons do so you're mostly left to button mashing your way through the whole game. And honestly thats really all you need to do for the most part. It's so poorly put together that you can just spam attack through nearly the entire thing. The enemies are the same couple ones with very minimal variance throughout most of the game. They clip through the environments and don't have transition animations so they often just teleport all over the place. The reused characters is so funny too especially when some are in the FMV cutscenes so its especially noticeable. Also not to insinuate anything but besides like some of the bosses, literally every enemy in this is a minority... so on top of everything else that's maybe not the best look. Despite how stupidly easy it is to just button mash through all of the encounters the game can be randomly hard at times. A big chunk of this is definitely because of how the controls aren't explained at all and you're expected to do certain actions for some enemies but more than this the camera is total garbage and there are multiple instances of cutscenes being flashed on screen during the combat making it hard to even see what's happening. Just as easily as you can stunlock enemies they can stunlock you and your character is very frail. Also like previously mentioned the characters just teleport around between animations so its just a huge clusterfuck of game vomit. Also they have the audacity to have a trophy for beating the game without getting hit, which is really funny.

Yeah, thats kinda all I have to say about this game. There's some other random shit like how bland it looks, like how the death loading screens being your mom/love interest looking at you lovingly. She has nice eyes and a good smile so thats basically the only part of the game I enjoyed more than I enjoy stubbing my toe. Also yeah, the same actress is used for both the main characters mom in flashbacks and as the main characters love interest. I'm not gonna comment further on it, I'm just as confused as you are. There's more I could complain about, endlessly even. But I'm tired of talking about this game lmao. In summary, this game is terrible and It's my least favorite game I've ever completed. It also gets the honor of being the very first game I ever give a 0/100 to, so congrats!

Thanks for reading y'all. Sorry this is only my third review three months in. Typing is just hard lol. I'm working on a Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe and Assassin's Creed Ezio Collection review at the moment so hopefully it won't be too long before you see me again. Take care, don't play this game.

Nancymeter - 0/100
Time Played - too damn much
Trophy Completion - who cares
Game Completion #1 of March
Game Completion #51 of 2023

It's like Yakuza, but you have no sound.

"The Quiet Man ending explained"
"The Quiet Man Freudian analysis"

The Quiet Man is a unique approach in storytelling using a protagonist that does not have the ability to hear the world around him. You, as the player, are also subject to piecing together the story without the use of dialogue during the first playthrough of the game. Theoretically, this could have been a great game that stands out from the rest by giving the player a small glimpse into the life of someone processing trauma while also living with a disability, but it was quite apparent that not much effort was put into the game as a whole.

Most of the game is spent watching live action cutscenes in silence. This, by itself, isn’t that bad but the constant switching between live action and mediocre looking 3D models gives it a very sloppy feel. This would be better if the story was something to be enjoyed but because the player is deprived of dialogue, the cutscenes are hard to understand and most of the time straight up nonsensical. Not to mention, while engaged in combat, story related content flashes on the screen, which, presumably, is important but it’s very hard to pay attention to what it is while repeatedly mashing the punch button.

On that note, the combat in this game is genuinely terrible. The grabs do not work, neither do the kicks for that matter. It wasn’t until two or three chapters in the game I was made aware of a special turbo-like button that changes the protag’s normal moves into all finishing moves that deal much more damage than usual. Only from being told by other people and spamming every button during fights out of sheer boredom would someone ever find out about it. The game genuinely feels like you stare into space for 20 minutes at a time then spam the punch button until someone dies.

In conclusion, someone definitely had an idea for a game and people really did code, test, and release it. The question of why someone on the team didn’t raise concerns about the overall quality of the game before it was greenlighted for release is honestly beyond me. It should be a complete embarrassment to SquareEnix to be associated with a lazy, half-assed project such as this. Amazing they have the gall to charge people $15 for three hours of pure garbage. I want the $3 I paid for this game on sale back.

Easily one of the worst games ever created and this is all due to one man's lunacy. It's a game that completely disregards both disabilities and the art form of making games.

The Quiet Man is a game that is completely silent, which just completely ruins the player experience. You cannot hear anything, and there are no subtitles, none for people that are speaking, and none for signs. That is until a patch came out later that put the sound back in but I'll talk about that later. Because the game has no sound, you will not understand anything that is going on throughout.

It's a beat em' up game with hilariously bad animations and wonky hit registration. The graphics are murky, and it just looks ugly as all hell. Even if the fighting mechanics were well crafted, it doesn't matter because again, you can't fucking hear anything. Also the game is extremely formulaic.

It goes like this: Cutscene, then you walk into a room, you fight some guys, then walk into another room, fight some more guys, then another cutscene, then some more fighting gameplay, and then another cutscene. And it just goes on and on until the game is finished. Repetition is putting it lightly.

The lack of all the audio is the fault of Kensei Fujinaka, the game's Producer. I'd like to quote some things that he said in an interview as to why the game is like this, and it makes so little fucking sense that you can't help but just laugh at it.


"Words are truly amazing. They possess the power even to change the world. This is undeniable. For me, words are as precious as they are valuable. That said, I believe we as humans are capable of connections that transcend words - for example, an infant need only to look into the mother's eyes to know he is safe and loved.

And in a world that overflows with cascades of words taken for granted. I can't help but think that it's often difficult to realize such connections exist. Words shape consciousness, indeed, some even say that "words are life." But what if we were to cast away such a life? What if somehow, we were able to understand one another through connections formed heart to heart, soul to soul, and could once again look into another's eyes and form a bond so pure?

This concept lies at the core of The Quiet Man. Feelings that remain after words are abandoned, feelings that can be conveyed even without words - aren't these the feelings that are so important in this life?"

So if you have no idea what you just read and if you don't understand how that relates to the context of this game, then let me answer that for you: It fucking doesn't. Kensei Fujinaka has made a game that doesn't even reflect to what the hell he is even saying.

Words are not sound, but this game HAS words. They're used as a form of communication just like me and you do. The presentation of the game is void of words, but only because it is void of SOUND.

The main character Dane, can clearly speak, even though the premise of the game is that he's deaf. And while he does at times act like a deaf person should, we can't hear him or anyone else ourselves. Basically, this Producer made a game that clashes with his own ideology and just misses the point entirely. The guy just doesn't understand how being deaf actually fuckin' works.

If I was a deaf person I would be pretty fucking insulted because of how poorly this game portrays what it's actually like to be deaf. There is no attempt whatsoever to educate on what it's like to live without one of your senses. It just presents itself and expects the player to make sense of its ridiculousness without giving any necessary context to how a deaf person perceives the world around them.

So instead, it feels like you were just robbed of one of your senses at random and you have to navigate yourself without the necessary preparation a deaf person has had beforehand. It just blows my mind that a game like this was even made.

The intent of this game was to put us into the shoes of Dane, but it doesn't work because Dane knows what is going on, but we DON'T, and there lies the problem. The gameplay only serves as a driver for the story in order to excuse itself as a video game.

This game is not just an insult to deaf people, but it's also an insult to both game narratives and game development as a whole, because everything in this game is DELIBERATE.

The funny thing is though, even when the sound is turned back on, it's still extremely hard to make sense of the story. It's a revenge story that doesn't make any sense. The voice acting is awful, the presentation is crappy, and it has twist ending that involves Dane...transforming into a superhero.

...What?

Anyway, a week after this game came out, a patch was released that put the sound back in. And after that, Producer Kensei Fujinaka responds to all of the negative reception, and if you thought the first quote was nonsensical, holy fuck it pales in comparison to this quote, in what can only be described as utterly ass-backwards:


"What really happened on that fated night... If the truth is indeed which that remains after words are thrown away, then can we resist the powers of reality that is spun from these words? I want to find what is truly important, without being misled by these overflowing words.

And with only that, do I honestly want to look at it carefully. That wish has driven me to make a story without words. However, when making this theme, that just wasn't enough. Yes, it really felt like "half" was missing. Approximately one week after release, via a free patch update, The Quiet Man will be reborn. A second version with sound and words called The Quiet Man: Answered.

The story will bring light to the truth, and maybe even uproot the mystery that was thought to have been solved as if to say, "I knew nothing at all..." The first version that threw words away. The second version, that brought words back in. A story dramatically transformed. This is the completed experience.

And so with everyone, I want to ask this: Can we really be strong to say we do not need words, even if we need them? In a word overflowing with words, can we really find something beyond them?"

And there you have it. A game created by a person with an over-inflated ego that has attempted to shit all over the artistial integrity of stories and video game development. A person who doesn't even understand his own ideology. This level of gross incompetence can only be described as meme-worthy.

Thank you Fujinaka for showing us just how much you have no fucking idea how to make video games and write stories. Maybe you should join Hollywood instead, they don't really have any standards whatsoever.

1/10


The Quiet Man é do tipo de jogo que a ideia no papel parecia uma obra fora do normal, e de certa forma ela é. Fora de qualquer noção de uma pessoa normal, a premissa soa interessante nos primeiros minutos.

Pois a ideia de por o jogador em pé de igualdade ao personagem deficiente auditivo, inicialmente soa como uma forma de excluir o jogador do contexto geral do mundo e narrativo, e antes de começarmos o jogo é dito que irá ter legendas em momentos específicos do para que não tenha uma frustração maior ao jogador.

As legendas aparecem, sem exagero nenhum, na cena inicial e na cena final do jogo, mas por todo o jogo ela te abandona e você fica a mercê da interpretação da direção de cenas (que por vezes é genuinamente interessante) o que me fez ficar cansado do jogo nos primeiros trinta minutos.

Ao invés de ser TOTALMENTE sem som em cutscenes e o som abafado em combate, seria infinitamente mais interessante as cenas tivessem legendas quando o personagem estivesse vendo a boca de alguém, remetendo a leitura labial e liberar o som em partes que o protagonista não está em cena, e utilizar desses momentos, em partes cruciais para a historia, ao invés de forçar uma segunda jogatina com som nomeada de The Quiet Man "Anwsered", me parece fora de tom.

E digo isso levando em conta que jogar The Quiet Man é uma tortura, movimentação dura, câmera horrível dentro de combate, I.A dos inimigos é burra demais (e outras é inteligente até demais). Resumindo a opera, é um jogo quebrado, são 3 horas de um tormento que não desejo nem pro meu pior inimigo.

No mais, ainda é um jogo que eu respeito, é um jogo corajoso, ele claramente não tem medo de errar (e ele erra muito) que me desperta uma curiosidade mórbida. E devo dizer, definitivamente não vale a pena, mas com certeza foi uma das experiências mais diferentes e frustrantes que tive com videogame

this is actually the first game ever to sell a trillion copies if u think about it

A great time with friends. Fun challenge is to dub over the entire game when it's in silent mode and see if the plot you all came up with is better than the new game plus where you can hear the dialogue (spoiler: it absolutely will be)

watched a playthrough cause i wasn't gonna buy this. it was pretty funny. shit game tho

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on my pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end


heyyo

at the very start of the game I was stuck for more than 20 minutes because I didn't knew that I have to press down then hit A

WHY CAN'T I JUST PRESS A INSTEAD

well anyways, fantastic start

as someone that didn't played a lot of bad games,
man this game was bad. not the way that it was like...funny or anything like that, it was just tedious

to the game's credit it had really great looking visuals, and acceptable ones on combat sections

but ooh boi the game itself,
I feel like this would've been better as just a bad movie, not a bad video game

the amount of pointless "go from point A to point B" which was like 10 steps away and then the next cutscene plays made the pacing so annoying and the cutscenes themselves didn't help either

and the combat? well it goes from "Mash X" to "sometimes hit Y" and then "sometimes hit A" and the B button is just useless because most enemies can't be grabbed or you get hit when you're grabbing them or even they break out of it so it's just what's the point just Mash X

the game doesn't explain ANYTHING to you, for 3 hours I didn't knew I could go into powerup mode with LT and the game doesn't even hint at you about any of the buttons and what they do until you pause the game and look at the visual representation of what every button do, which I didn't knew it was a thing and even then sometimes you have to do something that the game doesn't tell you about and you just have to...test every single button I guess

the whole "Quiet Man" mechanic of the game made the cutscenes so much worse, and no I'm not saying that having voices makes it better hell no it's much worse, although it COULD have been much better if the story actually made sense

it's just...really really horrible game design
this whole game is a failure of game design

like I can see where they were going with it, but they missed the mark BY A LOT
probably because of communication problems between the dev team

as a nail of the coffin I didn't even get a ending it was just a black screen

this game was a pain to experience
not only because it was tedious but I just feel bad about all of the actors, artists and the budget for this game

Legitimately some of the most fun - if maybe for the wrong reasons - I've had out of almost any game in the year I played it. It's easy to dunk on but it was short enough to not feel tiresome and honestly I would replay this again before even glancing at most overly long-and-bloated games.

The sheer audacity of this thing to even exist makes it worth checking out.

Look, I don't know what to tell you. The Quiet Man is an inexplicable game in every way. It was developed by talented people who had a genuine vision, clearly very intent on making something unique. And I can't help but love that it exists.

Imaging how many layers of creatives and executives had to be swayed for this game to exist. A FMV brawler with no dialogue and professionally shot cinematic cutscenes. Cutscenes that go on for minutes without the player knowing a single word that is spoken.

It's meant to simulate the deaf main character's lack of hearing, see. Never mind the fact that the character himself understand what's being spoken. Never mind that this narrative device makes the game totally incomprehensible.

Imagine how persuasive Kensei Fujinaga must be. I adore and envy him. Because The Quiet Man is bad and makes no sense but it's also amazing. In a shocking number of ways, it's inventive and well-made. The cutscenes are beautifully shot in real locations, and the almost non-existent UI helps make the transitions between cinematic and gameplay genuinely impressive at times. Even the fighting has its moments of charm, at least until it gets repetitive and unclear. It took me to my second playthrough (yes) to understand a fundamental gameplay mechanic because the game never informed me that it existed.

I can't really explain how happy I am that The Quiet Man exists because it's a charming misfire of the kind that you rarely see these days. It's the sort of bad game that can only come about from wild experimentation and creatives who are as persuasive and enthusiastic as they are deeply misguided.

Maybe the worst game released on the PS4, certainly the worst game from a major dev/publisher. Even years later, I can't force myself through the miserably bad combat system (I just finished Tenchu for the PS1 and its fighting was better) a second time to finally see the hilarious voice-acted cutscenes with dialogue worse than the Forspoken trailer. I also love how NG+ reveals that the deaf-mute protagonist isn't actually deaf-mute? So what was the point of making people sit through 30-minute silent exposition cutscenes? How is Square Enix still in business

i'm pretty sure i know one of the only existing fans of this game. he picked this for a game club that i participated in and it was only $2 so well... 🙂

didn't really know much about this other than the fact that it was infamously bad to an extent you don't frequently see these days. beyond that i didn't realize that this had actual combat/beat em up gameplay on top of the narrative based stuff. i wish i had stayed unaware but it's too late now.

the two gameplay formats are at complete odds with each other. the story has no flow to it because you're constantly being interrupted (in a jarring fashion) by another fight sequence. i could see a better execution of either the combat gameplay or the narrative itself appealing to fans of those kinds of things but given that they are both miserable slogs it doesn't make anyone happy.

i know there's a second run where you get sound and such but there's no fixing this for me. i'm not bothering.

I lost a bet over a dreadful State of Play and my hopium for a Metal Gear collection. The result: My PlayStation library is tainted because of this game.

This review contains spoilers

I have many feelings about The Quiet Man. Not all of them are bad, although most of them are. This will be laden with spoilers so beware if you're planning to play this game after reading this review (although I'm not entirely sure why you would).

The premise (I think- I'll get to that in a minute(1) ) for The Quiet Man involves a young deaf man, who for reasons never explained in my first playthrough (another thing I'll get to later(2) ), is supernaturally strong, fast and durable- to the point where getting stabbed is something you can relatively just walk off. I'm willing to give it a slight pass as it's an action game, but there are some mechanical things(3) that make this narratively dissonant. Your character's mother(4) was killed in an accident, and again, I think(1) that afterward a police officer takes you in. That police officer might also be your father, but I'm not entirely sure. You then spend the game going after your mother's killer, and then after a masked individual who stole your friend's girlfriend(4), culminating in a showdown on a rooftop.

1- Let's talk about the issue with the storytelling in this game. As I stated, your character is deaf. Due to that, whenever anyone talks, it sounds like their voice is being replaced with menu noises from a PS2. Everyone has this crystalline, floaty, echoing sound that replaces any actual words that they speak... meaning that you, as the player, has absolutely no idea what's happening at any given time. You start the game by taking out some thugs and getting a briefcase that you return to your friend, and then are either asked, or hired, or maybe force your way into (again, you have absolutely zero way of knowing.) going along with your friend's girlfriend(4) to some club she sings and plays piano at, before she's kidnapped and such.

In-universe, there's a degree of sense. Your character cannot hear anything and so everyone talking to him comes across as noise. That's fine. As a -player- it's nothing short of infuriating. You do a bunch of 3D beat-em-up fights(3) and then there's some characters that make noises at one another, and then you're beating up more people. The cutscenes are long and plentiful, using FMV real actor sequences interspersed with gameplay. But having zero context to anything doesn't add intrigue- it's just confusing. You don't know the motivations beyond 'save girl' for anything that's happening. There could be some potential context clues but they're all so minor that it's impossible to determine. It just makes trying to find a reason to keep playing a chore.

2- After you clear the game once, you do unlock a new mode where there are voice overs. This supposedly reveals more about the plot itself, but I cannot get up the care to try to play through the game a second time. Possibly this could increase the enjoyment of the game but seeing how things were handled in the other aspects, my hopes aren't high. The fact that there could be a mode that alleviates a major frustration with the game is still not enough reason to replay it is telling.

3- The core of the game are beat-em-up scenes where your deaf character takes on groups of thugs, gangsters and eventually what I think is a private security detail. Your footing on the ground doesn't seem to matter as any kick or punch you throw has you gliding forward with each movement, which makes your attacks feel as if they have no weight. Adding to that, and perhaps the LARGEST grievance I have, is that when you can actually play the game, there is no sound. No sound, no music, nothing. Just swinging your fists and feet into a soundless void. Nothing has impact, nothing has any real stakes.

Beyond that, the character has two attack buttons, and varying them can give you different combo strings. These never change (with one exception(5)) and you never learn new moves or techniques or anything, aside from a 'Focus Mode' which you only get information on if you lose a fight (which displays your mother(4) and then you're back in the fight with basically no consequence aside from restarting it) which is L2. Or LT, I guess, depending on when you started gaming. The worst part about these rather boring strings is that they are intentional. The developers wanted to tell a story and didn't want the player to get bogged down in extensive technical fighting so they made this weird, floaty, impactless, brainless system that never changes. Genuinely worse (SOMEHOW) than watching actors with PS2 voices talk to each other.

4- Sharp-eyed individuals may have noticed that I tagged both 'Your friend's girlfriend' and 'mother' with the same tag. For reasons that I cannot comprehend (although maybe it'll become clear to me if I replay this godforsaken game) they use the same actress for both your character's mother, and your sort-of love interest. She's with your best friend, but she clearly wants your character, and he has turned her down multiple times if the flashbacks and other scenes are to be trusted (although without being able to hear what the hell is going on at any point, it's hard to say).

It just gives the entire game a really gross feeling because of the very obvious sexual tension between this woman and your character, intermixed with flashbacks of his mother when it's the same actress. It just makes it seem as if he's protecting her and wants to be close to her because she looks exactly like his mother which yes, he did traumatically lose as a child, but there's still a great deal of incestual vibes that come up from it that just make everything feel...gross. Supposedly she also knows your police dad (who may or may not be your real dad) and so that almost makes it even worse.

5- The ending is a nonstop ride of batshit. Your friend turns on you (or maybe you turn on him, it's not really clear) and you end up getting shot, which is the first thing that really puts you down. However, there are flashbacks in dealing with a child psychiatrist where the child version of Dane (your character's name (which I just remembered)) is drawing a weird bird creature with his mother. It's the same mask that the kidnapper that took your friend's girlfriend wore, only kidDane tells the psychiatrist that it's him...and so then you put on the mask and despite being shot, you are now even stronger and faster and more durable than before. Then you go and fight your friend who is a muay thai expert for no real reason and you have to fight him multiple times before he shoots you more, and then doublets you in the head while you're on the ground.

Then you just...come back as some revenant of vengeance and you're even more stronger and more faster than with just the mask on and you murderkill all sorts of your friend's private security force. Then you do it to him before the super power wears off, but you're still alive, and then it turns out your police dad was the guy who wore the mask and did the kidnapping in the first place so then you fight him after you're exhausted (both your character and you, the player, for having dealt with this bullshit for this long) before it finally rolls credits once you've won.

-

There are few redeeming qualities, which I will highlight here-
-The transitions from FMV to gameplay are generally pretty smooth.
-Sometimes during the easier fights, there are flashes of things going on in Dane's mind that sort of replace the background. I thought these were a neat way to show what he was thinking while doing mindless button mashing.
-Dane has personality. Not much of one, but given everything else they bungled, I'm genuinely surprised to see that he does have a personality of his own and isn't just a blank slate.
-The transition into bird reaper of kicking ass -was- cool in an edgy way which I frankly enjoyed, but at that point I was so done with the game I really couldn't care less.

-

All-in-all, just watch a let's play. This game isn't worth playing and the only mildly interesting parts are the story anyway and even then there's basically nothing of importance here because of the fact that you have no idea what the hell is going on at any story juncture.

Final Rating: dirty stinky doodoo farts

okay, i didn't play this game myself, but i DID watch someone else play this game for 5 hours straight, and honestly, i think that's just as bad as playing the game yourself.

to start, from what i saw, the combat in this game is absolute dog shit. it's basically just kick and punch simulator. there is no fun to it. in fact, it seemed like it could get so bad in certain areas and some bosses were nearly unbeatable. can't say much on gameplay bc i didn't play it, but i can assure that it was probably awful.

now, the fucking cutscenes. the CUTSCENES. the gimmick in this game is that there is no sound because the protagonist is deaf, which would be fine, if the game wasn't like 90% cut scenes. there aren't even subtitles. it's just... sit around and watch some insane 3d play out without knowing anything about what is going on. i was basically guessing with the person on what was happening. eventually, it became at least slightly clear, but if you need to guess what is happening in a game, it's probably not that good.

the story that we guessed wasn't even that good to begin with. so basically his mom died in a gun accident, he got mad, and he met a girl who looked like his mom and he's... romantically involved with her. which is sort of disgusting. this "story" isn't even that intriguing. it's super basic, and when some random ass supernatural elements get thrown in, it just makes zero sense. this is obviously an attempt at "interpret it in your own way" but they failed at it miserably. i've experienced many up to interpretation stories before, and this one had no idea how to make that kind of story good. at all.

i really don't wanna talk about this. this wasn't even a "so bad it's funny" game. it was just fucking awful. even simply watching it was painful and i just wanted it to fucking stop so i could go play p5r.

please don't play this. spare yourself.

This is a really unique game to me because it's a game that just does not work and the devs didn't try to do anything smart with it at all. A story told through narration where there's no sound because the player is "deaf" is something that can only be done through subtle storytelling that's built around that game but the devs sought it fit to instead do the most boneheaded thing which was to make a normal beat em up game and then simply removing all the sound from it, until you play through it a second time and oh wow now you can hear what was really going on!

Problem is you're sitting through your first playthrough watching a five minute cutscene where people are talking and the camera is focused on people's faces and you just sit there stoopified and nervously giggling to yourself because nothing is happening because you have no sound! You can't understand the scene because you're supposed to hear the dialogue! But they don't want you to! Even more more bizarre is the main character who's deaf is apparently understanding what people are saying in the cutscene but you, the player, aren't! Oh my god! Also the combat is bad, the story itself isn't that great when you hear it....

Like, I'll be honest, this game is bad but I kinda have to respect the developers for putting it out the way it is. I'm not saying they're secret genuises or deserves to be awarded for the state of the game but, a game published by a major name in an age of hyper polished, railroaded safe experiences that are terrified about offending or leaving players lost, I have to appreciate it just a little bit for what it is. A total mess that could've been stopped many times but instead was given the go ahead and even a spot at an E3 conference. In 2018. Man.

The Quiet Man is a heavily technically flawed game with an ambitious premise that ultimately is its biggest weakness. In The Quiet Man you play as a modern day post op Hellen Keller [you better congratulate him] who appears to be a skilled fighter akin to John Wick who has the strength of the Terminator, doing shit like punching someone so hard into a door it flies off both hinges.

When you're not watching cutscenes that are a combination of FMV (that's full motion video, referring to actual live actors for you young folks) and surprisingly good CGI you're set into a "game" with mediocre early xbox 360 level visuals and gameplay that would be unacceptable for even an early PS2 game, yet here with are with a late PS4 game like this.

The combat is extremely sluggish and feels like a worse version of the Batman Arkham games combat, lacking an option to seamlessly flow, grapple or even block, or at least if they're there the game didn't say shit about it. Yet the combat can be slightly satisfying at times even with the frequent slowdown.

Mechanically it's basically a Walmart version of what Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons does to an extent, in this, there's almost no audio and almost no subtitles so unless you know how to lipread you're basically gonna be just sitting there twiddling your thumbs up your ass. At least in Brothers there's actually audio and polished gameplay and visuals with the story conveyed through actions, gestures and expressions with a fictional language.

There are moments where bosses inexplicably can block 99% of your attacks until you do a random thing to temporarily stop it, which because of how sluggish the combat is, is a pretty big deal, hell, some segments require such intense button mashing to survive you'll likely develop arthritis or carpal tunnel.

But the real icing on the cake is whenever you die in battle, your wife or mom or whatever [go fuck yourself Sigmund Fraud], she makes a really stupid duck face in a cutscene that goes on for far too long, and sure she's pretty but because I'm pissed off at this piece of shit game, all I can think is wow, you have a punchable face.


Most enemies are Chollos and ICP fans whom you beat up in those "damn bitch, you live like this" apartments, except for some douche canoe with a taser baton who cosplays as a plague doctor and in ch 6 where you fight mobsters, who are no doubt fake Italians lining up to buy tickets to the Mario movie

Honestly I'm not really sure what the story is even supposed to be about, but I'm sure it's one of those games where you don't know wtf is happening but you're sure it's supposed to be sad. But by God by chapter 2 or 3 out of 6 you'll be begging to fall asleep.

Overall, I fucking hate The Quiet Man, it's not just a waste of $15 but more importantly a waste of 5 hours, sure on Steam it was $3 but even that is a ripoff, do not purchase this game under any circumstances, it's easily in the hall of worst games of all time and there's a reason the studio went defunct a year after releasing this pile of camel shit. It's a 0.5/10.

You know there are far and few times that I rate a game this poorly. The fact that it goes between FMVs and gameplay is really jarring. There's a character who's deaf but the other characters just speak to him normally???? I understand that folks who are deaf can read lips but using ASL throughout would have been far more realistic and I'd probably have been able to at least get somewhat of a gauge of what was going on.

I understand kind of what they were going for, as A Quiet Place sort of did the same thing with doing a whole movie through ASL and having no dialogue and that was genuinely a good movie. This....was inconsistent and a mess. The combat was just button mashing and hoping things would work. Some enemies (or I guess bosses) couldn't be hit at time and you just had to mash and hope you'd hit them.

This is just overall a very boring game and honestly? Like most people have been saying, it's just not worth playing. I did like the cinematography of the cutscenes and I do think the idea could have been decent but the execution was woefully bad. So for that I give this a 10/100

This game is extremely important for the representation of people with mommy fetishes.

The best part was when the quiet man said: [...]
Truly breathtaking


My angry review of this game is one of the highest rated reviews of this game on Steam. I suggest you go read that to get a good idea of why I hate this game so much.

Generally I like to go in detail and talk at length about what I liked and disliked about a game when writing reviews like this, but considering The Quiet Man has wasted enough of my time as is I'm going to just be blunt and get this over with as fast as possible: This is the worst game I have ever played.

The gameplay feels like if you took the earliest possible pre alpha demo of a Yakuza combat system and released it. There is exactly one combo you have and you'll be seeing it a lot because this game just likes to throw random combat at you every 3 seconds. The story is practically non existent because in trying to emulate a deaf character they just removed all sound from the game despite the fact that the character has conversations with some characters and clearly understands what people are telling him to do and what they're asking him so instead of emulating what it must feel like to be deaf it just feels like you're watching a movie on mute. The main character uses sign language exactly three times throughout the game which I thought was important to bring up since again, according to the devs they were trying to emulate how life is for those who are hearing impared, without even really including the most common way deaf people communicate. The nicest thing I can say about this game is that for most of the shots the FMV cutscenes seem to be shot competently.

Game just is not good, and I hate to say that because I like to see the good in even bad games but I just felt like my brain was melting as I played this game. To make things even worse when I closed the game it didn't even close it just hid itself in the system tray so it was still up but just continuously eating my ram. I wish I could say I was surprised by this but when I discovered this the next day I was more just disappointed that the game couldn't even close right more than anything.

1/10

Quiet indeed, the game has no sound in the first playthrough, no music, no sound effect and no voice over which is nice to have in a story game.
You see, the player character is deaf and so is the player and while Dane (whose name you wouldn't know even after your done playing) can read lips and use sign language, there is a good chance that the player cannot.
Somehow they make it possible for you to feel more deaf than a deaf person.

You'd be correct to think that the story is pretty much impossible to follow without any sound/words.
The whole game you'll be struggling to piece together what is even going on.
Most of your time will be spent looking at people talking, in complete silence.

It is only in your second playthrough that you'll be able to play with the sound on and even then it is nothing special.
Considering that the vast majority of players will not play the game twice, let alone after seeing what a disaster it is, I think it is fair to say that this was a very bad idea.

Aside from this the game does not even work that well,
it is filled with glitches and bugs.
The game does not even tell you the controls or mechanics.
My personal peeve is that losing a fight makes you have to watch a woman smiling, staring or making funny faces at you for about 30 seconds, which is pretty insulting especially in a fight where you have no idea how to even damage the enemy (which is a surprising lot of them).

Very bad game, not even funny bad and most of all not worth the 2,99 I paid for it.

I’ve been mulling it over, and I genuinely think this is the worst game I’ve ever played.