Quantum Break is a perfectly alright game. Anything that it does well gets overshadowed by its ambition to do something new. The TV show, while being enjoyable for the most part, doesn’t contribute to furthering the plot of the game. The game itself is fun, even if it has clunky controls and doesn’t ration out its distribution of powers. All of these things come together to make a game that has enough great ideas to stop it from being a shit game, but too many shit ideas keeps it from becoming a great one. This leaves it being alright. Perfectly alright indeed.

Let’s start with the TV show because it is the newest part, not just to Quantum Break, but to video games in general. I was skeptical about how this was going to work when I first heard the idea, but Remedy structures it quite well. What I don’t like the structure of is the streaming. The game is broken up into 5 acts, and at the end of each act, you see an episode of the TV show. Each episode lasts for about 20 minutes and by default, is streamed. This really takes you out of it when you have to wait for the episode to buffer, particularly if you don’t have the best internet, which I don’t (thanks, Australia). Your alternative option is to download every episode which will take up a measly 75gb. Microsoft can go fuck themselves. As for the quality of the show itself, it is quite enjoyable and well produced. Quality wise it is the type of thing I would expect to see from a high-quality YouTube show or a low-quality Netflix original. It’s acting talent delivers and it helps to flesh out the characters and story of the game. I say flesh out because you could play the entire campaign without watching a single episode and not miss out on any crucial part of the story. All the important plot points and cool time travel elements are all in the game, with the TV show giving you more of an insight to the lives of key Monarch employees.

Like pretty much every other game these days, Quantum Break’s story is driven by player choice – to a certain extent – which can also affect the TV show. This was another thing Microsoft was making a big deal about. ‘Look at our game, not only does it have a TV show, but the TV show will change based on what you do in the game!’. Really Microsoft? That sounds awesome! Just as long as it’s not a single choice right at the end of an Act that then shows us one of two possible TV shows. But I’m sure you wouldn’t do that to us… Except that’s exactly what they did. The whole episode also doesn’t change, only about 5 minutes throughout the 20 minute episode. Add this to the fact that the TV show does nothing to progress or change the plot of the game and it left me often wondering why I was making choices at all. Despite the TV show being fun to watch and definitely leaving me excited to see more of it, the illusion of choice did begin to take away from my enjoyment towards the end of my first play through and sat with me throughout my second.

I’ve spent an awful amount of time critiquing the production of a television show when I am writing a review on a video game, so let’s look at the actual game itself. Quantum Break puts you in the shoes of Jack Joyce, a regular man turned ruthless killer once he is imbued with Time Powers. All of Jack’s powers are very cool and fun to play around with, and given to you right at the start of the game. This is both good and bad, meaning that you can experiment with almost everything right from the very beginning, but means there is no variation to the actual gameplay as you progress. The game tries to mix it up by introducing new types of enemies every so often, but they never force you to play the game in a different way. Rather than challenging you with new mechanics, it challenges you by putting you into rooms where you are well outnumbered until you gun your way out. Quantum Break has a few occasions where it makes full use of its time-bending mechanics to make some of the most exciting set pieces to play through in a game. Making your way across a broken bridge as a ship is crashing into it or through a junkyard when decomissioned boats are crashing down around you is the definition of bad ass (seriously, look it up, it’s in there). It’s a shame they didn’t take more advantage of this and include even more of these set pieces, since there are only 2 or 3 instances of this in the game.

STOP! Power time.

The real crowning glory of this is the story, which I say as a sci-fi nerd myself. I love a good time travel story, and thankfully Quantum Break establishes a lot of rules around its idea of time travel to keep plot holes to a minimum. The game started off a bit of a slow burn for me, but the further I got into it, the more I wanted to play and find out what was going on. While in hindsight some of the events may have been predictable, I saw almost none of them coming (which I guess sums up time travel). One of the reasons I really did enjoy the TV show was because it gave me more story that I couldn’t experience in the game, which I did think was an interesting idea. It throws some new ideas into the mix, but overall stays true to the themes that make time travel stories so exciting. The game wraps up the main story neatly, but does seem to give itself a bit of wriggle room for sequels which comes across as confusing and unnecessary. This will be all the more enjoyable for players who like science fiction anyway, but still keeps the time travel parts simple enough to not alienate people who have girlfriends or real lives.

While Quantum Break has some technical short comings and doesn’t quite deliver on all of its ambitious ideas, it is still an enjoyable ride. While it is definitely not my favourite Remedy game, it is probably my most appreciated, due to the fact that it is actually trying something new. If studios continue to work on the balance between how TV shows and games should mix together, it won’t be too long until a game comes along and knocks it out of the park. As it stands, Quantum Break is the definition of playable, that would certainly be worth your time once it starts going on sale.

6.5/10