The first truly jaw-dropping moment in Quantum Break arrives just minutes in.
An experiment involving time travel has gone wrong, as they are wont to do, and time is at a standstill. Debris is everywhere, hovering in mid-air, and you can interact with all of it – each object nudging out of your way as you brush past it. This, you think, is really damn cool.
One of the things Quantum Break knows is cool. It knows how you felt watching time be re-written in the first two Terminator films. It knows how mentally stimulating it was seeing actions ripple into consequences (and paradoxes) in Looper. It knows how you couldn't stop grinning when you first saw the Quicksilver sequence in X-Men: Days of Future Past. And it knows that if watching other people using time powers is cool, it's got nothing on having your own.
The latest game from Remedy Entertainment follows Jack Joyce, a man imbued with time-altering powers when he’s exposed to a time machine. Hunted down by the nefarious Monarch Industries, it soon becomes clear that all of this chronological meddling could be bringing about the end of time itself. Or, as one character succinctly puts it: "If time is an egg, it just f****** broke."
Being given super-powers in a game isn't new - power-ups, special-moves, and warlock attacks are all gaming staples. What makes Quantum Break different is the way the powers are implemented. Rather than strictly being weapons, or get-out-of-jail-free cards, Joyce’s abilities give you options – as a group of enemies approaches, how will your time-bending gifts get you past this latest batch of Monarch muscle?
Like Jack, you learn to use his skills and when to apply each one over time, getting better, more reactive, more tactical. Enemies often arrive in large numbers, forcing you to think on your feet - or perish in a hail of bullets.
One of the most satisfying moves sees you dash forward like DC hero The Flash while time around you slows down, allowing you to take down an enemy as they react in slow-mo. The first time you nail it, you’ll punch the air.
Joyce's abilities have different functions through the game too. A puzzle-led platforming sequence sees you turning back the clock and zooming at high speeds to travel through a collapsing freighter, while in a combat encounter the same ability lets you surprise enemies by popping up next to them out of the blue.
It’s visually stunning as well, though the Xbox One occasionally struggles to keep up – while anomalies in time are realised as glitches, you suspect that the occasional visual hiccup isn’t there on purpose.
Just as effective as the gameplay is the story itself, delivered in a mixed-media format that’s never been attempted on this scale – the game is punctuated by live-action TV ‘episodes’, roughly twenty minutes in length. While you play as the hero, the show follows the inner workings of the baddies at Monarch.
The story also unfurls through walk-and-talk sections of the game, almost like interactive cut scenes, performed in motion-capture by a great ‘him-from-that-thing’ cast (Iceman from X-Men, Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, Cedric Daniels from The Wire). It feels truly immersive and lifelike, leaping over the uncanny valley – if you turn the camera you’ll even see characters' lips as you wander around, moving perfectly in sync with the script.
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The TV show isn’t the strongest part of the experience, but it helps to build up the game world nicely and deliver some exciting moments, despite not being something you’d watch on its own. While Shawn Ashmore and Aidan Gillen get star billing, the series spends more time with minor characters, and visually it’s closer to a low-budget sci-fi show than a glossy premium cable drama.
As part of a package though, the whole thing works. For all its playing with storytelling and gaming mechanics, Quantum Break feels like a brilliant throw-back – in a world of daunting RPGs and passive FPS titles, it’s an offline, single-player, action blockbuster that tells a very specific story (with a few key choices for the player to make along the way), and it feels like a rare treat.
Fans of Remedy Entertainment would expect nothing less from the studio who gave us Max Payne and Alan Wake. The developers spend years poring over their titles, and Quantum Break is no different. With an engine built especially to realise its story and super powers, it results in an experience that feels crafted and individualistic, existing and performing on its own terms – and, with its live action episodes, pushing the definitions of what a game can be.
Quantum Break does for time what Portal did for physics: it turns it into a glorious playground that constantly brings up new ways to approach gameplay, puzzle-solving, and storytelling in a way that repeatedly dazzles and surprises.
Bold, fun, inventive, and really, really cool – Quantum Break is well worth your time.
Quantum Break arrives on Xbox One on April 5
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