Have you ever been surrounded by a crowd of heavily armed goons and thought, "If only I had the power to manipulate time and use this situation to my advantage"?? Well if so this is the game you've been waiting for! Quantum break is an intriguing mix of gameplay and narrative styles that blends together to create an entertaining third person time travelling adventure.
On installing and updating the game the first thing that will catch your attention is that the main characters in the game are all played by recognisable film/TV actors. You have X-Mens Shawn Ashmore (Ice Man) playing the hero of the piece and he is up against his one time friend and long time Game of Thrones brothel owner Aidan Gillen. These characters and the game itself is beautifully realised with gorgeous graphics and effects.
The game itself can be broken down into three pillars; firstly you have exploration which sees you investigating the environment for items and intel. There are emails, text messages and letters to snoop through which really adds some additional meat to the story and helps further the games mysteries and characters motivations. Locations are rich and varied, one level may have you blasting through a sterile research lab whilst time freezes and breaks down around you, and the next level may see you have to infiltrate a swanky end of the world garden party. The second pillar is all about the action and firefights where you can use a myriad of different weapons and time manipulation powers to cut through the many henchman the games evil corporation employs. The final pillar is all about storytelling which the game does through cutscenes and several 30 minute TV episodes at the end of each chapter. The story itself is entertaining Sci-Fi fare with plenty of twists and turns, crosses and double crosses and trips back and forth through time that will easily have you engaged right to the end (Sadly there's not a DeLorean or a Huey Lewis track to be seen). What helps the games strong story is the unique use of the already mentioned live action 30 minute tv episodes at the end of the chapters. This is a storytelling mechanism that I haven't seen employed too often and reminds me somewhat of how the Command and Conquer games used to use real actors in cutscenes to further the narrative. In the case of Quantum Break these episodes look far more professional and really help flesh out the world and the characters in it whilst setting up the events for the next chapter. They are effectively done and help provide a sense of perspective and urgency to proceedings even if they are a tad on the cheesy side. Another nice touch with these scenes is that actions and choices you make in game can affect how these episodes play out, though the changes are only minor and don't have any real effect on the main story.
With the narrative being so strong it sometimes feels like the action and gun play elements get in the way and that the developers only added these action set pieces because it was a game and they felt that they had to. Guns whilst varied don't really pack any weight or heft and I found aiming to be quite loose and not very precise. The time manipulation powers do fare a lot better and are a lot of fun to use right up until the end. You can stop time, speed through time, use time as a shield or a weapon, and the different ways you can mix these powers up leads to a variety of strategies that you can employ to bring down your foes.
So to conclude, Quantum Break is 10-15 hour action adventure, time travelling yarn that should be experienced by anyone that likes a good sci-fi tale told in a unique fashion who also enjoys bringing down evil corporations with time bending super powers. Thumbs up from me.