Overall really enjoyed this experience. The cast are compelling and a bit more relatable than that of Until Dawn. The horror aspects weren't as intense as Until Dawn, but there's still plenty of atmospheric scare and tension at many moments throughout the story. The story is a bit longer, but I think it does a good job of highlighting the many cast members at various times. The gameplay mechanics are an overall improvement from Until Dawn, with the holding breath mechanic far superior to the movement-based mechanics in Until Dawn. That said, holding down a button for a known amount of time had almost tension and leaves a lot to be desired.
The collectables were genuinely fun to find and contributed to slowly building theories about the surrounding world. At the end of my run, the story wasn't entirely cleared up, and unsurprisingly it isn't completely explained until you've reached the True ending.
My biggest gripe with the game is the means of replaying the game. The replay chapter select is improved from Until Dawn, but it's still incredibly time-consuming to attempt to replay chapters for alternate endings, making searching for videos of alternate decisions and cutscenes far more appealing than actually replaying the game, especially for the busy gamer.
The narrator of Until Dawn was one of my favorite components of that game, and truthfully, the narrator between chapters of The Quarry doesn't compare. The system for previewing future events is almost useless as well, with little room to interpret the events you preview, and it had zero impact on my gameplay experience.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game and would definitely play it again with a different group in the future that hadn't experienced it before. However, in my opinion it's best experienced once with supplemental youtube video watches as needed to fill in story gaps that might not have been covered by your playthrough.
I played this game together with my girlfriend, and it was a lot of fun to exchange who was holding the controller at different times, and it was incredibly accessible and enjoyable even for someone who doesn't play video games much at all.
The collectables were genuinely fun to find and contributed to slowly building theories about the surrounding world. At the end of my run, the story wasn't entirely cleared up, and unsurprisingly it isn't completely explained until you've reached the True ending.
My biggest gripe with the game is the means of replaying the game. The replay chapter select is improved from Until Dawn, but it's still incredibly time-consuming to attempt to replay chapters for alternate endings, making searching for videos of alternate decisions and cutscenes far more appealing than actually replaying the game, especially for the busy gamer.
The narrator of Until Dawn was one of my favorite components of that game, and truthfully, the narrator between chapters of The Quarry doesn't compare. The system for previewing future events is almost useless as well, with little room to interpret the events you preview, and it had zero impact on my gameplay experience.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game and would definitely play it again with a different group in the future that hadn't experienced it before. However, in my opinion it's best experienced once with supplemental youtube video watches as needed to fill in story gaps that might not have been covered by your playthrough.
I played this game together with my girlfriend, and it was a lot of fun to exchange who was holding the controller at different times, and it was incredibly accessible and enjoyable even for someone who doesn't play video games much at all.