Author of major works such as the first two episodes of Max Payne and the excellent Alan Wake, Remedy Entertainment is a studio that has made its reputation on a certain know-how, that of telling us great stories in the service of mastered gameplay that has always loved slow-motion action. Bullet time with all the sauces and Quantum Break is no exception either, since it is here a question of temporal fracture and time travel. The player finds himself in the skin of Jack Joyce, played on screen by the American actor Shaw Ashmore, who is best known for his role as Iceman in the first X-Men trilogy. His presence in the casting is also quite recent since it was only recently that he inherited the main role, pushing Remedy Entertainment to completely change its plans. A little too young for our taste, not necessarily a great actor, his choice seemed a little wobbly to us and no doubt imposed by a production that wanted to breathe more general public into the game. In the end, Ashmore is doing quite well, even if he does not appear for more than 5 minutes in the TV series which clearly highlights Paul Serene, the big bad (played by Aiden Gillen, the famous Petyr Baelish in Game of Thrones), and other secondary characters. But we will come back to it.
AND TIME IS RUNNING
As always with the Finns of Remedy, the story has a very important part in their conception of the video game, sometimes taking precedence over the gameplay. Quantum Break does not escape this furious desire to unpack a concrete scenario, an exciting thing where it is a question of displacement in time that human beings have been trying to master since they play with science. Just to put things in context a little, know that the events are told from the point of view of Jack Joyce, the hero, who finds himself in a room questioned by a young dark-haired woman who tries to understand how he knew how to stop the time divide. We then learn that at the base, Jack Joyce and Paul Serene are two childhood friends who will become the worst enemies following a succession of events that have gone wrong, in particular the live death of William Joyce, the brother of Jack (played by Dominic Monaghan), killed by a Paul Serene from the future. Obviously, Jack will therefore do everything to return to the past to not only try to save his brother from a death that awaits him, but also to prevent his friend Paul from falling into the dark side of the Force. But if we stick to the key phrase of the game: the past is something that cannot be changed. We will not go further in the revelations, but one thing is certain, Sam Lake and the developers of Remedy Entertainment know how to do to keep the player / spectator in suspense.
PREVIOUSLY ON
This is all the more true since this time, the studio leaves the player the choice to be master of his destiny, with real storyline branches established when the player takes control of Paul Serene, the bad guy we remind you. This is the other Kiss Kool effect of Quantum Break, which takes the time to develop the other protagonists, leaving aside Jack Joyce and the azure blue gaze of Shawn Ashmore. The game is also carefully divided into several acts, each comprising three chapters. It is moreover at the end of each act that the mini-series is added, played by the same actors who participated in the performance capture to find themselves modeled perfectly in the game. In absolute terms, the TV series is divided into 4 pieces of 22 minutes each, but the choice made by the player having real consequences in the rest of the scenario that it is necessary to double their number. Which also explains why to download the entire series, you need at least 75 GB of free space on your hard drive. In which case, the series is streamed directly from Microsoft's servers, causing quite annoying bugs, such as the appearance of subtitles with at least 7 seconds in advance (!!) compared to what is happening. on the screen. But let's move on.
And you will see that leaving alive or not certain secondary characters considerably changes the course of the story, but also the vision of things.
You will therefore find yourself in the shoes of Paul Serene having to choose between two distinct paths, with often difficult choices which lead to consequences which are nevertheless revealed to us in broad outline. It is also a very good idea to be able to give us an overview of the sequence of events, which gives us time to make the decision that best characterizes us. For example, from the end of the first act, we are asked to either kill a young girl with a bullet in the head, or to leave her alive in order to use and manipulate her against Jack Joyce. later. And you will see that leaving alive or not certain secondary characters considerably changes the course of the story, but also the vision of things. Only regret: the end of the game will necessarily lead to the same conclusion, with these same questions that remain unanswered. In this regard, stay until the end of the credits, there is, like Marvel productions, a new sequence waiting for you.
BACK TO THE PAST
As you will have understood, like the first two Max Payne and Alan Wake, Quantum Break has been the subject of particular care in terms of its history, with secondary characters worked and brought to the same level. than the two main protagonists. This is all the more true since the game is full of additional elements to collect (notes, emails, logbook, audio cassettes) forcing the player to explore the levels and allowing him to better understand what is going on. within Monarch Solutions, the company of Paul Serene who succeeded in manipulating time. Where things get more complicated is on the gameplay side, which turns out to be very classic, not to say frustrating at times. In the tradition of Remedy productions, Quantum Break is therefore a Third Person Shooter where the use of firearms is important. As usual, we start with a small caliber at the beginning of the game to end with slightly heavier guns, although at no time will we end up with a rocket launcher, Joyce not being John Rambo either. Still, it takes a little time to adapt and calibrate to adapt to the handling of the game, the weapons requiring a slight decline, a bit destabilizing at the start. Once we got used to the weapons, we then have fun identifying the interactions available to our hero. Hallelujah, Jack Joyce can take cover! A first for a Remedy game that had always dispensed with the duck & cover yet inseparable from any good modern action game. Even Alan Wake, released in 2010, didn't have a cover system. But let's move on. That said, if Jack Joyce can lean against any element of the decor, he does not really do so at the whim of the player. No button to press for it to take cover, it must automatically when you are close to any object. In fact, why not, but it turns out that the action does not start systematically, especially in the slightly more nervous shoot phases where it is often fun to move from one hideout to another. . To tell the truth, we are still trying to find a justification for this choice of game design on the part of Remedy, who would have done better to do like everyone else so that the whole thing is more fluid and above all better controlled.
Using firearms is no problem for him, but mandalizing an enemy who is a little too sticky, no, it's obviously not possible.
But the gameplay aberrations don't stop there. Very quickly, we see that Jack Joyce is not the type to fight with his bare hands. Using firearms is no problem for him, but mandalizing an enemy who is a little too sticky, no, it's obviously not possible. At a time when games like Uncharted 4 push the possibilities of combat and interaction with environments even further, Quantum Break prohibits any contact with the enemy, which must necessarily be killed with a firearm. It's all the more infuriating that the latter can conversely give us blows from the butts without it bothering anyone. There is indeed this famous powerful punch that it is possible to swing, but this one is only unlocked through a temporal power and which only occurs halfway through the game. we almost never expected it. Similarly, we would also have liked the developers to leave us a wider field of action in how to apprehend a situation. We think in particular of the possibility of playing it more delicately with phases of infiltration. What chi! Quantum Break is always the same gameplay mechanics that are repeated tirelessly, oscillating between phases of ultra-directed scripted platforms and shooting zones that must be cleared to move on to the next sector. 2016 damn it, guys! 2016!
TWO STROKE, THREE MOVEMENTS
To compensate for the lack of melee combat, Jack Joyce has many powers that he will acquire over time, and that is the case to say. Following the temporal fracture (which leads to the end of time, we remember), our hero has a range of skills that allow him to have the upper hand over any armed soldier. There is for starters the Time Stop, a kind of time bubble in which Jack can lock up an enemy who then finds himself frozen for a few seconds. By watering this bubble with bullets, Joyce then increases his strike force tenfold as soon as time resumes its course. The effect is not only effective, but the visual rendering is by far the most successful, with its small fragments of images that break. There is also the Time Shied, a time shield that has another very useful function, that of regenerating more quickly. A protective field that you will use very often, especially against enemies in temporal suits, allowing them to be active during a temporal fracture. A little later in the game, Jack unlocks the so-called Time Dodge power, which allows him to concentrate his energy on a distinct area and then create a temporal breath capable of sweeping away any enemy and therefore killing him with one one shot. The longer the charge, the greater the damage. There remains one last power, the famous Time Rush which allows you to move at the speed of light, but also to administer a punch to an enemy by pressing the B button as soon as you approach it. The visual rendering is also very nice, especially since the light version of Time Rush allows you to move like lightning like a Flash without a costume. What you need to know is that each of these powers is governed by a cooldown system that is there to prevent abuse. It is up to the player to juggle between each power and its reload cycle, which is therefore associated with gunfights.
Classic in its approach will say some, old-fashioned will claim others, the gameplay of Quantum Break actually lacks madness and youth. Admittedly, it remains fairly controlled and the powers are really hot, but we would have liked Remedy to show a little more inventiveness to bring itself up to the level of current productions.
Classic in its approach will say some, old-fashioned will claim others, the gameplay of Quantum Break actually lacks madness and youth. Admittedly, it remains fairly controlled and the powers are really hot, but we would have liked Remedy to show a little more inventiveness to bring itself up to the level of current productions. We don't want to knock down the titan fight card, but in a little over a month, Uncharted 4 is coming, with this desire to offer more open and modern gameplay. And then, how can you not blame Sam Lake and his teams when you know that these powers are underused after shootings? However, there are many platform sequences where we have fun freezing objects to pass certain obstacles, rewind time to reveal missing elements, but all these puzzles really lack consistency to have the feeling of playing to something new. Similarly, we would have liked the level design to be a little more inventive, the scenery to be more varied. It clearly lacks madness, especially since everything has already been said and played in Quantum Break, so that we have a feeling of frustration once the end credits are over. Fortunately, the game has with it another devastating selling point, which is none other than its plastic. OSEF of the 720p upscaled controversy! In the image, we do not see the difference since the game displays high quality graphics. It is especially at the level of the modeling of the characters that the game commands respect. Rarely have facial expressions in a video game been so close to reality. The textures are clean, the scenery successful (if not varied) and the whole thing is embellished with effects of time distortion that often pushes us to contemplation. In short, a spectacular graphic result worthy of the talent of the developers of Remedy. Next time, fingers crossed for the gameplay to be as innovative.
