1 star? That's a bit harsh you might think. Well let me lay it out for why I honestly think this is a genuinely terrible game, and why I'm officially fucking done with Supermassive games.
So, backstory: loved Until Dawn. Had such a fucking blast with that game. And so I've played every Supermassive game since, chasing the high of that experience. At the time it felt fresh, new and fun, a cool interactive choose your own adventure horror flick. And then with each Supermassive release since then, I've been constantly disappointed, none of them have been that horrible, yet none have been great either. And they've cranked them out at a ridiculous rate, releasing a new game every year since 2015. All having the same tired mechanics, all having the same middling horror stories. Well, after playing through The Quarry, I'm fucking done man.
Firstly, the dialogue, sweet jesus the fucking dialogue. The dialogue is diabolically awful. Every line of dialogue makes me want to thrust knitting needles through my ears. And look, the voice acting is good, they actually hire good actors to say this shit. But it sounds like dialogue written by a particularly crude AI scripting program. Its so clunky, tin eared and un-natural, it instantly makes you hate EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER, because all of them sound the same, spouting the same unbearably cringe, trying way too hard dialogue.
And just to rub a big pile of salt into the wound, you cant fast forward or skip dialogue, and you cant skip any cut scene EVER. Even when you have beaten the game, they refuse to give you the option. So if you want to Plat this thing, oh boy are you in for a a god awful time, because you will have to sit through 3 FULL playthroughs, and a few partial playthroughs. Each playthrough is about 7-8 hours. Imagine sitting through a terribly written 8 hour fucking movie which cannot be sped up in any way, not once not twice, but 3 full times, and then having to do the equivalent of another full playthrough backtracking to various chapters and hoping you don't fuck up that one particular QTE, because if you do, oh shit son! You gotta quit out, reload the chapter FROM THE FUCKING START, and do it all again and hope you don't fuck up again. Some chapters are over an hour long. FUCK THIS GAME.
The characters are all annoying AI dialogue robots who you want to die ASAP. The story is a fucking lazy mess, some shit about an evil hillbilly family battling some werewolves, and these camp counsellors are stuck in the middle. This weird fucking woman who you meet after every single chapter, she spouts absolute drivel that never has any significance and is always just boring nonsense, and then she asks if you want to see some 2 second scene that is supposed to give you a hint of what not to do, but is never really helpful in any way. Her whole character doesn't make sense; is she talking to you the player, who exists in the real world? Because she is also a character in the fucking game too, so HUH? This makes no fucking sense! Its all just absolutely maddening nonsense, and some of the worse writing I've ever experienced in a video game, or any medium for that matter.
Phew, what else....ok the graphics. So the mo-cap they used has an unfortunate side effect of looking really good at one second, before looking horribly, ugly bad the next. And so we are constantly in the uncanny valley, characters facial animation and body movements constantly fluctuating between natural and disturbingly un-natural. Its REALLY off-putting, and very distracting.
Gameplay is as stale as a loaf of 8 year old bread. Since 2015's Until Dawn, there has been absolutely no innovation or attempt to mix up the basic gameplay. We get loooong ass cutscenes, then you get to control a character, you walk (no you cant run, but you can hold L1 which makes you walk only slightly faster....like what's the fucking point??!! just make us walk faster or give us a run button!!!! FUCK!!! but of course they just want to pad out the game to make it seem longer) around, finding clues, occasionally you will get n action scene where you either button mash or do a series of QTE's. just think about that. button mashing and QTE's.....this shit has been around for 20 years now and is just the laziest bullshit, most games have discarded it because its lazy ass trash.
And that's it. Exactly the same fucking gameplay, story, writing, game design, graphics, characters as very game since Until Dawn. The same boring fucking formula that they crank out year after year. And well done Supermassive, you kept me hooked on your line until now, playing every new game to see if they changed or tried to improve it in any way. And every time Im disappointed and depressed. But nah, after The Quarry, Im fucking DONE man.
Oh yeah, and the end credits are un-skippable, and cant be sped up in any way, and they go for 15 fucking minutes. Seriously dude? FUCK. THIS. GAME.
So, backstory: loved Until Dawn. Had such a fucking blast with that game. And so I've played every Supermassive game since, chasing the high of that experience. At the time it felt fresh, new and fun, a cool interactive choose your own adventure horror flick. And then with each Supermassive release since then, I've been constantly disappointed, none of them have been that horrible, yet none have been great either. And they've cranked them out at a ridiculous rate, releasing a new game every year since 2015. All having the same tired mechanics, all having the same middling horror stories. Well, after playing through The Quarry, I'm fucking done man.
Firstly, the dialogue, sweet jesus the fucking dialogue. The dialogue is diabolically awful. Every line of dialogue makes me want to thrust knitting needles through my ears. And look, the voice acting is good, they actually hire good actors to say this shit. But it sounds like dialogue written by a particularly crude AI scripting program. Its so clunky, tin eared and un-natural, it instantly makes you hate EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER, because all of them sound the same, spouting the same unbearably cringe, trying way too hard dialogue.
And just to rub a big pile of salt into the wound, you cant fast forward or skip dialogue, and you cant skip any cut scene EVER. Even when you have beaten the game, they refuse to give you the option. So if you want to Plat this thing, oh boy are you in for a a god awful time, because you will have to sit through 3 FULL playthroughs, and a few partial playthroughs. Each playthrough is about 7-8 hours. Imagine sitting through a terribly written 8 hour fucking movie which cannot be sped up in any way, not once not twice, but 3 full times, and then having to do the equivalent of another full playthrough backtracking to various chapters and hoping you don't fuck up that one particular QTE, because if you do, oh shit son! You gotta quit out, reload the chapter FROM THE FUCKING START, and do it all again and hope you don't fuck up again. Some chapters are over an hour long. FUCK THIS GAME.
The characters are all annoying AI dialogue robots who you want to die ASAP. The story is a fucking lazy mess, some shit about an evil hillbilly family battling some werewolves, and these camp counsellors are stuck in the middle. This weird fucking woman who you meet after every single chapter, she spouts absolute drivel that never has any significance and is always just boring nonsense, and then she asks if you want to see some 2 second scene that is supposed to give you a hint of what not to do, but is never really helpful in any way. Her whole character doesn't make sense; is she talking to you the player, who exists in the real world? Because she is also a character in the fucking game too, so HUH? This makes no fucking sense! Its all just absolutely maddening nonsense, and some of the worse writing I've ever experienced in a video game, or any medium for that matter.
Phew, what else....ok the graphics. So the mo-cap they used has an unfortunate side effect of looking really good at one second, before looking horribly, ugly bad the next. And so we are constantly in the uncanny valley, characters facial animation and body movements constantly fluctuating between natural and disturbingly un-natural. Its REALLY off-putting, and very distracting.
Gameplay is as stale as a loaf of 8 year old bread. Since 2015's Until Dawn, there has been absolutely no innovation or attempt to mix up the basic gameplay. We get loooong ass cutscenes, then you get to control a character, you walk (no you cant run, but you can hold L1 which makes you walk only slightly faster....like what's the fucking point??!! just make us walk faster or give us a run button!!!! FUCK!!! but of course they just want to pad out the game to make it seem longer) around, finding clues, occasionally you will get n action scene where you either button mash or do a series of QTE's. just think about that. button mashing and QTE's.....this shit has been around for 20 years now and is just the laziest bullshit, most games have discarded it because its lazy ass trash.
And that's it. Exactly the same fucking gameplay, story, writing, game design, graphics, characters as very game since Until Dawn. The same boring fucking formula that they crank out year after year. And well done Supermassive, you kept me hooked on your line until now, playing every new game to see if they changed or tried to improve it in any way. And every time Im disappointed and depressed. But nah, after The Quarry, Im fucking DONE man.
Oh yeah, and the end credits are un-skippable, and cant be sped up in any way, and they go for 15 fucking minutes. Seriously dude? FUCK. THIS. GAME.