The Quarry Review – Not Up to Snuff (PS5)

The Quarry Update 1.07

Despite existing since 2008, Supermassive Games truly didn’t hit the big time until their 2014 PlayStation exclusive, Until Dawn. An adventure game, Until Dawn played like the type of games Quantic Dream is known for, but in a more horror vein. It’s premise was simple but intriguing; play as a group of characters and depending on your actions in the game, these characters could live or die and the story will branch off and continue without them.

There are all manner of various ways the story can play out, adding a ton of replay value for people that want to see them all. It was a special game that put them on the map and created the template they’ve been using for their games ever since. The Quarry is their first full-priced (the Dark Pictures games are discounted, much shorter games) retail title since Until Dawn so the anticipation was high. Unfortunately, due to slow pacing, bad writing, some poor performances and truly annoying design decisions, The Quarry rarely, if ever, matches the successes of Until Dawn.

Gather ‘Round the Campfire

Set primarily at Hackett’s Quarry, a summer camp, right after the kids have gone home, The Quarry finds the remaining camp counselors stuck overnight and having to deal with a threat trying to pick them off one by one. Yes, this sounds like the set up of countless slasher films like Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, The Burning and many others, but The Quarry has a twist up its sleeve. I won’t dare spoil it here, it’s one of the best surprises the story actually has, but things aren’t what they initially seem.

The cast of counselors all have different personalities for sure but only a few register as anything more than two-dimensional. After the effective prologue, the game slows down to an absurdly slow pace for what I can only assume is character development reasons but the problem is, most of the dialogue and these moments are incredibly banal. It’s one thing to watch them in a movie, it’s another thing to have to play through them. And for me, it was a slog because literally none of the inter-character drama is interesting.

As the night unfolds and the threat becomes more clear the pacing picks up and becomes a much more interesting experience. Unfortunately, it also shows that the story makes very little sense. It raises more questions that it can possible answer because the clues you find speak to the larger mystery but not at all why the playable characters are there in the first place. It takes the whole “shut your brain off and enjoy” adage to a whole new level. There are certain genre elements that don’t quite come together making this a hodge-podge mess of a narrative. 

That’s All She Wrote

I’m spending so much on the story because that is the primary focus of the game. As far as gameplay goes, it’s primarily walking around, interacting with specific things in the environment, making binary choices on what to say or do, some really basic QTEs, a hold-your-breath mini-game when a threat is near and some really wonky shooting. Like most adventure games, having specific items for specific situations will come in handy and could mean life or death, but once you pick them up, you never have to guess when to use them. The game will prompt you with an aforementioned binary choice to either use the item or not.

That’s really all there is to it. There are some collectables you can find in the world that reveal more of the story of the world and the supporting cast, and some tarot cards you can find that allow you to see a possible outcome of something happening in the next chapter but none of it feels of any real consequence.

Horror Convention

The horror veterans of the cast, Lin Shaye and Lance Henriksen gives strong performances given their brief screen-time. Ted Raimi gets the most screen-time from all of the horror vets and does a really good job. David Arquette is also in this. The rest of the cast of actors range from solid to good with one performance from Justice Smith being downright awful. He’s supposed to be brooding, according to what the other characters say, but he’s so flat he feels like he’s doped up. I have a theory that his performance was so bad that the writers went back and said he was brooding to try and excuse it. It’s truly that awful.

Ho-Hum Horror

Generally these games have a ton of replay value given the various outcomes you can have but between the languid pacing and the frustrating lack option to skip dialogue or cutscenes it made the prospect of doing it all over one that I wasn’t interested in. There is a chapter select available once you’ve completed the game and a death rewind feature that allows you to basically use three lives per chapter to take back a death of a character which is cool, I guess.

With Until Dawn Supermassive proved they know how to tell a good story with somewhat interesting characters and good pacing, which is all the more disappointing that their first proper follow up, The Quarry, comes up short on so many levels.

Score: 6/10

Pros:

  • Some interesting ideas I haven’t seen before
  • The prologue is effective
  • The game is gruesome when it comes to death
  • The horror veteran supporting actors are all fun here

Cons:

  • The pacing of the first half of the game is painfully slow
  • You can’t skip dialogue or cutscenes which makes replaying it a slog
  • The story has logic holes when you start to consider what’s happening and why

The Quarry review code was provided by the publisher. Version tested PS5. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.

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