Hey, we are back with another game, today we will be doing The Quarry Game Review, in this article, I will be sharing my personal opinions and give you some pros and cons about The Quarry game Review.
Now, this is the newest from Supermassive Games, the folks behind the Dark Pictures Anthology games, and more importantly, the excellent “Until Dawn.”
They’re sticking with what they do best here, Interactive horror, this time multi-platform, and this one is really interesting.
The Quarry game Review: Visuals
It’s got some really awesome, scary visuals, great licensed tracks and sound design, well-acted characters with really convincing facial animations, lots of grossness, lots of references, some new gameplay mechanics, and lots of decisions to make.
It may not be the most active game. If you’re looking for deep gameplay or in-depth exploration even, you’re not getting that here, but you’re getting a pretty harrowing adventure with some really cool moments and some solid decision-making with branching paths.
Now, I’ve only scratched the surface with one playthrough, but it is a fun time, cover to cover, if you like these types of games. I absolutely do.
Full disclosure, “Until Dawn” is still one of my favorites, and I don’t know if this is better than “Until Dawn,” but if you’re looking for something like that, you definitely get it here, and just so you know, this footage was captured on a review copy, the PC version, and this gameplay is spoiler free.
I’m only showing the intro and snippets from like the first two hours of the game or so.
It’s really not a lot, because the story, the surprise, is the whole thing.
But basic back-in-a-box story setup, the titular quarry in this game actually isn’t technically a spooky, haunted rock quarry or anything.
It’s actually a nice sleepaway summer camp called Hackett’s Quarry, it’s deep in the woods in, I think, upstate New York.
It’s super remote, but pretty robust, With young campers that come in for the summer, and there are a bunch of buildings and different activities to keep them all busy, and it’s all across an expansive section of beautiful woods and a lake, and it’s staffe by young, naive camp counselors and is ran by none other than David Arquette from “Scream.”
Now, what ensues is pretty, at first, like a traditional teen horror camp counselor thing, with the kids wanting to party, and they end up getting wrapped up in an intriguing horror mystery, featuring ghosts and monsters and weird people.
And the location of Hackett’s Quarry itself is just a really well-realized location that feels real and pretty big, and it’s fun to explore.
Chapters
Now, the game is made up of, I believe, 10 chapters, and you bounce around between the perspectives of different characters pretty quick.
Sometimes, you’re a character for 15 minutes, exploring and going through something.
Other times, you’re a character for like two minutes.
It really jumps around and keeps you on your toes, and I think does a good job of keeping things well-paced and interesting.
On the other hand, the game does not really let individual locations actually breathe too much.
You can slowly walk around locations and look at stuff like in these types of games, but options for looking at stuff is pretty limited, even for this type of game.
Technically, there’s not a lot to click on.
Collectibles
And there are two story-based style collectibles, but then there’s really one type of collectible you’re hunting for, which I’ll get to in a minute.
It just feels more bare bones than you’d expect in this regard.
And you’re not really walking around picking stuff up or really solving puzzles.
The main focus is on linear progression with the occasional poking around, and I just, I wanted a little bit more of that.
Now, I think this is just because the game spends a lot of time on the decisions.
You’re making decisions and hitting branching paths a lot.
Whether it’s being aggressive with someone or being nice to someone or going right or going left, there’s a lot of it, And it seemingly does make a difference in how the story plays out.
Every so often, you can see the seams, but most of the time, you can’t.
Characters can die, and be altered for different reasons, and it’s cool.
I actually found myself letting certain things happen sometimes, just to see how it would play out because I predicted small plot points.
I don’t know if that was the intention, but I did sometimes.
The Quarry Game Review: Quick-time events
Now, quick-time events are pretty simple and don’t have much impact, at least for me, nowhere near as interesting as other games in this genre.
Now, most people don’t like these simple button presses or button mashes.
It’s the bare minimum level of input, but I actually think in certain games, they can be done right and have at least somewhat of an impact, but here, they don’t.
They’re not thrilling and are usually soft and simple and few and far between.
The game is also pretty generous with missing a step in a quick-time event and having your character die. You actually get lives.
It’s more about them dying with your significant choices, I think.
Finish the game once, and there’s actually a different life system, too, and that is just a bunch of modes.
The game gives you a bunch of different modes and options, and most importantly, accessibility options if you don’t even like quick-time events, too.
So if you’ve played a game like this, you might mostly know what to expect gameplay-wise, but they add a bit more here.
The Quarry Game Review: Gameplay
In certain situations, if you choose to hide, you need to hold a button to hold your breath until the danger goes away, and it’s usually pretty easy, but it’s always cool when you release the button because you actually feel like you’re releasing.
The game just pulls it off well. You also occasionally will use a weapon like a gun in extremely limited situations, But it looks cool and works well enough.
The opportunity to jump in and interrupt certain things or just opt to not do anything at all often seem just as important as when you’re given A and B choices, which I really like.
Sometimes you have the opportunity to say, you know, run away from your captor, but it may seem like a dumb move, so you just ignore the on-screen prompt.
There are a few other mechanics I won’t spoil, but the game does a clever job of materializing them like a fun little animated camp instruction cartoon.
It’s really good. The gameplay is, like I keep saying, really, really simple and not super involved, even for the genre, but it’s a lot of just watching, but the choice-making and the decisions really make up for it for me.
I felt like I was making literally a moment-to-moment impact.
And really, the whole vibe of the game is great. It’s spooky, it’s got scary moments and some nice gore, but it’s not super grimdark.
Characters
The teens crack jokes, and even if sometimes they come off really cheesy, they’re generally likable or interesting because the game spends a long time setting them up and establishing, you know, their little summer camp soap opera relationships.
This is why video games are cool, man. Horror movies are great, but a lot of the time, the people that get murdered get like three minutes of backstory.
So here you actually get to take the time to get to know them and it makes the stakes a bit higher.
It just makes the characters a bit more interesting.
Plus, they’re played by some great recognizable actors.
Some older actors, though, who I won’t really spoil, Really steal the show in certain spots.
The best part, though, is just how it wears its influences on its sleeves, straight up, from the font choice for the game’s title, too few horror movies references the characters make, to some blatant and in-your-face references or callbacks.
It’s just in love with the fun, cheesy side of horror, and it’s charming.
It really made me want to play more.
Now, there are a few times, like I said, you can look around and find important key evidence items, which you track in a handy dandy, slick menu with a bunch of cool styles and Easter eggs and everything else you track.
But the main thing I was interested in that you’re gonna wanna hunt down are the tarot cards.
At certain points in the story, you’re thrust kind of jarringly to a random place in the first person where you have to talk to this spooky old lady.
Now, SuperMassive has done this type of storytelling in the past.
You can tell they just dig it.
But the purpose here is for her to read the tarot cards you find. Sometimes, you’ll just miss them and she’ll yell at you.
She was pretty pissed off at me.
But if you bring one, you get some creepy info and the ability to get a brief glimpse into a possible quick scenario in the future.
It’s usually super brief, and it’s really up to you to connect the dots, but it’s interesting.
The game also looks, I mean, downright stunning.
Visual Effects
The use of darkness and lighting here is great, and not just in a graphical sense, Like, wow, look at the lighting engine, but in an art direction sense.
They know how to make spooky cabins and haunted deep woods at this point, and they go above and beyond here in spots, especially like I said earlier with the characters, too.
They’re pretty out of this world visually and really believable. You get the nuances most times.
There are occasional glitches though, you know, weird hair movements every once in a while, someone’s mouth will spaz a little bit more, water splashes that look really strange, and little cutscene pop-ins here and there that might occasionally distract you, but it’s nothing too bad.
There’s also some great use of licensed tracks, like some contemporary stuff and some weird, cool covers of oldies, and it mostly fits really well.
I think the use of light pop kind of killed the mood for one scene in particular for me, but other than that, I really liked the use of music here.
Even if a lot of the music isn’t my preferred type of music, it just totally sets a good tone here.
So if you’re a fan of Supermassive Games, like I said, is it their best game? I don’t know, to be completely honest. It seems close.
I need to beat it a bunch more times, though.
But it’s certainly not their worst game.
It’s cool, it’s a little lighter, and despite kind of doing typical horror stuff, the characters really make it feel fresh as you’d expect.
The Quarry: 186 Different endings
It’s not the longest thing in the world, but the developers have boasted 186 different endings.
Now, I’m gonna be real with you guys that some of that is marketing.
There is no way all of those endings can be that drastically different, but still, I think the branching path stuff is significant enough for replays.
I can already tell. Also, because like I said at the start, the game is paced so well and so consistently interesting with new scenarios that I think it’s interesting enough to do some replays immediately.
The character stuff does take its time as I said, but once you’re past that, the game has some great moments.
You might wanna see ’em differently.
Not everybody is into this, but if you ask me, that’s half the fun, especially with the features where you can play it with multiple players in a co-op mode where each person is a camp counselor, and there’s an online mode coming, I believe, in July, where you can watch and vote for stuff with your friends in a watch party.
I think that stuff is cool.
I know some people personally that really dig that stuff.
So, I mean, there you have it. It’s maybe not perfect, but it is great for horror fans, especially if you’re a fan of this specific type of horror.
And if you’re a gamer who likes these more story-heavy cutscene experiences and just cheesy B movie, teen horror stuff, anywhere from the ’70s, ’80s, up until the 2000s, this might be worth checking out because I just straight up had a really good time playing through it.
But that’s how it works, man.
So, that is The Quarry game review, and here are some pros, some cons, and some personal opinions, a lot of personal opinions.
- Read more: Evil Dead: The Game Review
So now I wanna hear yours down in the comments.
Are you looking forward to “The Quarry”? If you’re watching this after the game launched, have you been playing it? What do you think? Have you had some cool outcomes? Has the game surprised you at all? Has it entertained you at all?
Let’s talk about anything at all that you’re thinking about with “The Quarry.” We’d love to hear from you. YOu can also reach out to us on Twitter.
