Thursday March 3rd 2016, saw a special event in London that allowed members of the public to be the first in the world to get their hands on the latest title from Remedy Games. The event was showcasing off the exciting new title Quantum Break which has been in development for nearly 5 years. The games actual release is April 5th 2016, and just shy of a month ahead of release I got to play a fully built version of the game at a special event in the heart of London.
With a number of Xbox One consoles and a few PC builds of the game running at the same time I was found to be playing the PC build. The game was running on the PC at a steady 1080p and 30FPS, Remedy staff at the event promised they are pushing for a 60FPS and 4K support for the games release on PC.
The cross platform save sharing a very interesting technique, you can share saves between both console and PC if you are not able to access one or the other, also if you would prefer to play a visually stunning game in 4K definition on the PC then that is good enough answer.
The PC build was using the Xbox One controller, though they assured people at the event that the game will be supporting mouse and keyboard for PC users. When pre-ordering right now on Xbox One you will receive a free copy of the Windows 10 version of the game, you will also receive a free Xbox 360 copy of Alan wake with both DLC and the follow on Alan Wakes American Nightmare. To be fair that is a hell of a lot of gaming for your money, this is good fan service and some great titles if you have not played Remedy’s previous titles.
Quantum Break is a very heavily narrative driven game with some extremely interesting time manipulation concepts at its core. The player controls Jack Joyce (Played by Canadian Shawn Ashmore of Xmen), the games opening first chapter has the character narrating the events which to place up to and then after gaining his time manipulation powers.
Quantum Break features some more great acting talent like Dominic Monaghan, Aiden Gillen and Lance Reddick. The Remedy team have been hard at work bringing the greatest likeness of each character into their virtual world and making something that can only be described as a blockbuster game.
The game itself is broken up into 5 different chapters with the sections in-between chapters called Junctions, the junctions are live action scenes in which the narrative of the opposing side is usually delivered. The events in the chapter can alter the junctions allowing the games story to alter as the player progresses.
Events in junctions can be altered by finding objects in the game that can be interacted with, though the player will have to go out their way to highlight and find the objects in question.
When playing the game I found it to be extremely responsive and smooth running, the introduction of time powers does not take place too late into the game’s first chapter as players are introduced to the action rather quickly within the game. The combination of 3rd person cover based shooting and the time altering aspects of combat work together extremely well and can give each player their own play style.
I do not wish to go into too much detail as this was not a review but rather a first hand on.
With a combination of weapons and time powers, the player is usually given a fairly decent sized area in combat the try out different combinations for attacking, the later game will have enemies that become immune to some of your powers making you change your play style and adapt to the greater threats.
My final impressions are something extremely interesting and fun to play, with the hopes that the final story is not over too quickly this will be an extremely pretty and well put together game. When I played it there was very little frame rate stutters but we were told to remember we were playing a development build of the game still as it is not the shipped version.
The game is due for release on 5th April next month, if you have not had this game on your radar or you have doubt due to the lack of exposure. I would say put all your fears to the back of your mind as this is a narrative action drive game the Xbox has been lacking for a long time now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4or8YE-6P4
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