The Quarry - REVIEW.
INTRO.
Took about 15 hours and all, but I finished up The Quarry, which is in current $12 Humble Choice for this October. Really enjoyed it.
If you're not a fan of cinematic-style adventure games like anything from David Cage and Quantic Dream (Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, Detroit: Become Human, etc), Telltale's games (Telltale's The Walking Dead games, Telltale's Batman games, The Wolf Among Us, etc.) and likely anything else from SuperMassive (Dark Pictures Anthology of games & Until Dawn) - I don't think this is going to convert anyone over to this genre of adventure games.
If you like and want a very-well voice-acted & very well-written B-movie inspired horror-movie type of cinematic-game - which I think is obviously purposely hammy, campy & funny b/c this is a game with an 80's to 90's Jason film (i.e. the Friday The 13th movies) - you will probably like this. The story is down-right bonkers, loaded with twists, turns, revelations, and whatnot in the story - and if you care about story & character development more anything, this is going to be for you. If you like movies and/or TV shows - absolutely, this is for you, as most of the time you'll be chilling and watching the story unfold...after you've likely interacted to make decisions & shape the story.
GAMEPLAY.
For gameplay - yes, when it happens - most of this game you'll be doing certain things here, like you'd normally do in this type of game. You will be interacting w/ the game-world & finding things like in most adventure games (or taking items like Lore, Tarot Cards, objects, etc.). You will be taking on QTE's (Quick-Time Events) where you need to slam certain buttons, keys, directions, or whatever on your game-pad or keyboard-mouse during intense cut-scenes & action sequences. I should note here, that I mostly played with a PC gamepad here - either my USB-based and wired Logitech F310 or Xbox 360 Gamepad. More so than anything here, you'll be making decisions that'll be shaping this entire journey of this 10-15 hour story here and its final permutations.
STORY.
So, what's the story here? A bunch of people are at a Summer Camp (Jason/Friday The 13th vibes here!) and all kinds of stuff is hitting the fan basically. This isn't even the half of it here, as there's a Family that has a history to this place & land, monster movie type of stuff here, and more. You, the player, will be bouncing between numerous characters in this big ensemble piece of a story, as you'll be trying to hopefully save as many important characters in this story, so that they'll be alive by the end. You have police man, a fortune teller/tarot card reader, some camp counselors, and more here - whose fates are all intertwined here in, in this horror flick of a video game. I don't want to give too much away here, as there's a ton of stuff going on here. And likely, most players won't be having the same outcome & could be replaying this game a crazy amount of times, as even IGN has said there's around at least 180+ variations here! And also when you talk with other players, there's going to be a good chance your playthrough is going to differ from the next person's playthrough.
GRAPHICS & PERFORMANCE.
The character models and their animations look fantastic. In terms of voice-actors here - likely motion-captured, I'd bet - to look this much like their real-life selves in game, is absolutely uncanny. Absolutely outstanding on this stuff. These are some of the best-looking character models that I've ever seen in a game, for them to look like their real-life counterparts. Ariel Winter, Lance Henrikson, Brenda Song, and Halston Sage look so much like their real-selves here...and it's astonishing how good this game got them down.
The game performed best on my desktop loaded with a 10700KF, 16gb RAM, multiple SSD's & HDD's, and 8gb RTX 3070, with most stuff cranked-up on High settings w/ a few tweaks and changes to the setting to customize it for myself. On my laptop with R5 5600H, 16gb RAM, 1 TB SSD, and 6gb RTX 3060 - well, I had it at mostly Medium settings with some other stuff customized a bit up to suit me. I aim for 1080p60fps, but it wasn't always at 60fps. Sometimes, got performance hits and drops - more so on the laptop than desktop. Regardless, I did have area transition stutters here & there - yes, more so on laptop than desktop. Regardless, the game looked great to me and also so did the environments & lighting here, which so fit the monster movie vibe & Summer Camp vibe here - but the characters models here, more so than anything, took the cake here with their graphics quality on the technical side of things.
OUTRO.
Regardless, I finished-up The Quarry and as a fan of 1980's and 90's horror movies especially & actually these type of cinematic-adventure games (like Quantic Dream's games & Telltale's games), I can add SuperMassive to this list of games of this type that I'll have to play. This game was a blast and given how replay-able this game is, with it's well known that this game has numerous different journeys and conclusions/permutations, I know I'm going to have to give this one another run-through. After my 15 hours or so with this, I can say: this "game" was a total blast and I really enjoyed this one. Yes, I enjoyed it A LOT.
