The Quarry Review (PC)

*VERSION REVIEWED: PC via Steam

Supermassive Games rarely miss, I’m a big fan of the Dark Pictures series, Little Nightmares II and the game that started my love affair with them – Until Dawn. But those games are in the past, what can Supermassive games conjure up in their forthcoming title The Quarry? Well let’s strap in and find out, shall we?

I’d like to start by mentioning that I played this on my laptop through Steam, however I did plug my Xbox Series X controller in to try and generate a more console feel whilst playing. There were a few laggy parts in the beginning, but I wasn’t sure if that is down to my laptop which is now 7 months old (a pensioner in tech terms), other than that it ran smoothly.

Enough of that then, let’s talk about the cast, shall we? It seems no expense was spared when it came to casting the characters. 15 celebrities were given parts: David Arquette, Skyler Gisondo, Justice Smith and my favourite of them all Brenda Song (Here’s a link to the full cast https://quarrygame.2k.com/). With such a star studded cast it couldn’t go wrong when it came to the voice acting though could it? Nope! Nothing wrong, no swerve here! I don’t know how much these guys know each other outside of the motion captures or their voice actings, but they all gelled well together. The only down point was I would’ve enjoyed a bit more of David Arqeutte!

It’s hard to review these types of games as it’s tricky to talk about the story without giving away spoilers, but I guess if you’re interested in The Quarry then you know what type of game to expect. I can assure you it doesn’t disappoint in that regard. Gory deaths from QTE fails and decisions that have consequences in the future, The Quarry uses the recipe well and makes you ponder on each decision you make.

Let’s jump into some of the features, shall we? During gameplay you will often come across tutorials which can be re-watched at any point, handy in case you forget some things or you just didn’t pay attention… The menu HUD is well laid out and it’s easy to navigate between your evidence, clues and tarot cards.

Tarot cards I hear you say? Yup, so in The Quarry they have changed things up. Usually you’ll pick an item up and it’ll give you a vision to pre-warn you over a potential threat or path later on. Supermassive have changed it up here by you being able to find Tarot cards which have been scattered around the areas you can explore, but it doesn’t give you the vision right away. Instead, you have to wait until the end of the chapter where you’re greeted by the lovely Eliza (Grace Zabriskie) where she’ll give you the option to look at the Tarot cards. But there’s a twist! You can collect more than one Tarot card per chapter, but you can only view one! Meaning you better be sure what the other Tarot Card/s mean! This will of course encourage extra playthroughs for those that want to see them all.

Another feature that I’ve enjoyed in The Quarry is the rate that you switch characters. You are never one character too long so it keeps it fresh and means all characters can have meaningful development and you can get to know them better, it also means you can make each character a pain in the ass to each other.

As with all games in this interactive horror adventure genre,there are pieces of evidence and clues for you to find which help you put together the whole story in the end, so it’s well worth exploring to see if you can find them, I’d say I was moderately thorough and I reckon I manged to collect around 70%-80% of them.

Another feature that is a good addition is the “Death rewind” option. This basically gives you three lives to save a character you may have “accidentally” killed off by choosing or messing up a QTE (Huzzah! – ed). But beware as on the occasion I used it, I lost about 45 minutes worth of progress to go back to the point where I messed up. this isn’t always the case though, sometimes you might just not want to *spoiler* so you *spoiler* instead… curse my paragon nature…

The game really does feel like every decision matters, spread that over 10 chapters with 10-12 hours of gameplay per playthrough and you really do feel the pressure of trying to keep everyone alive. The game does have accessibility options to help you though if QTEs or button mashing isn’t your thing, as well as aim assist, choice timer options and more. One accessibility feature I would like to see that I have only seen in The Last of Us 2 so far is to highlight objects of interest. This would be great for people who may find exploration difficult or for people doing a second playthroughs and completionist runs.

The main and only real disappointment for me is that online co-op won’t be available until July 8^th which is a shame as I now must wait another month to experience our EIC Jamie fail the QTEs and kill all our characters off (see above – ed). The other potential sticky topic is the price. At the time of writing, it costs £59.99 for the standard Xbox one version, £64.99 for the Xbox Series X/S version with the visual filter pack, or there’s the deluxe version for £74.99 which nets you additional 80’s style outfits (available by 7/8/22), instant access to the Death Rewind system, the gorefest movie option and the visual filter pack. For some that may be too much for an “interactive story game” but given the amount of longevity there is within the game, I personally feel it just about right.

Speaking of longevity, there is loads here thanks to the “movie night” feature. You can sit back and watch where everybody lives, everybody dies, you also have “director’s” chair which allows you to customise how the characters will act during QTEs, conversations and exploration. There is also the Gorefest movie mode, which I will leave to your imaginations as to what that could mean… There are of course many, many endings. The death rewind I did totally reshaped the direction of the way my story went.

Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier it’s hard to review games like The Quarry without spoiling the story, but I hope I’ve been able to whet your appetite enough with what could easily be Supermassives best entry to date. With the beautifully crafted scenery, soundtrack and great cast it’s certainly one I’ll be playing again and again once I get my Series X version!

This game was tested and reviewed on PC (via Steam). All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by the publisher.