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

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

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.

Very interesting. It would be a much lesser experience without anticipating the second playthrough having audio, so not advertising that was probably a mistake, but the format actually works quite well. On my first playthrough, I thought that it was either not making good use of the silence aspect, or it was abusing it so much that it didn't look that way, but I now think it was fine. There's a lot of things that are easy to miss, but none of them feel like cheap trickery.
In the silent playthrough, it feels less like a glimpse of what it's like to be a deaf person, and more what it's like to be deaf without the experiences of a deaf person (such as with how sign language isn't subtitled). As a result, I don't think it's true (as has been said) that it makes it look like deaf people don't understand what's going on (especially since the protagonist does appear to know what's going on), but rather that things are a lot more difficult.
The playthrough with audio is a lot more original than might be expected, though it's a pity that by the time you reach parts in the second playthrough, the questions you may have had in the first playthrough are very possibly forgotten. If it was a bit shorter, a third playthrough before the final version could've been interesting (to try and piece together things once more), but it's not really worthwhile.
It also looks very nice graphically, though the transitions between animations in gameplay are a lot less smooth than most cinematic games. The transitions between different types of cutscenes and gameplay are very smooth though.
Also the combat is fun, it's very linear and it fulfils the same kind of role as QTEs. I played it on the easy difficulty but died quite a few times, though it's very doable.
Also worth noting that if it wasn't for the audio stuff, it would be fairly normal. Some of the writing's quite cringe (and it's nice that the first playthrough spares you from that) and a lot of it's general lowbrow action film stuff. If it was only the version with audio, it'd be neither terrible nor worthwhile. But the fun comes from creating a mystery based on allowing the user to raise their own questions, with the answers clearly and fairly provided later.

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.

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.

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

Terrible, simply terrible.

I wanted to give this game a shot, stream it to my friends and meme the hell out of it... It was hard to.

From the live action switch to 3D gameplay was off.

I could barely understand the plot in the beginning.. Because guess what? You're deaf! I feel like I'm in an underwater cinema.

Don't waste your money on this.

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