The Quarry Review

The Quarry

Another thrill ride or a lazy rehash?

Supermassive Games has found a niche for themselves in the horror genre. When the company released Until Dawn they found a wide audience of PlayStation users who would play through the game then invite their friends over to discover all the different possible endings. Then the company would self publish anthology titles under the Dark Pictures banner. It’s been seven years since the company began down this path and there are clear marks of progress shown in The Quarry. Being ear-marked as a “spiritual successor” to Until Dawn, Supermassive has taken the criticism from prior titles and made a clear focus on improving the accessibility features of this game. In previous titles, the “Don’t Move” or “Keep Calm!” segments would prove to be difficult and a point of frustration for players that wanted to achieve the “Everyone Lives” scenario. And despite features that helped with aim assist and the option that could toggle quick time events from tap to hold, there was no function to make these frustrating sequences any easier. In The Quarry, players can now make it so certain events can automatically succeed, albeit only in a single player setting. This is still a major step forward that raises the inclusion of the product and I’m sure brings a lot of joy to the community.

When it came to the story, I found myself rather excited to see what subgenre of horror Supermassive would tackle next. Having done wendigos, alien vampires, and ghosts, the early scenes hinted at certain lupine horrors stalking the woods at night. When these monstrosities would be fully revealed however, it appeared that the models for the aforementioned wendigos were simply reused with minimal changes.

The monsters weren’t the only ones to be reused as certain locations seemed eerily similar to the locales of Mt. Washington, and character beats screamed of simple retreads. It was bad enough to not be able to connect with any of the nine playable protagonists, but to begin making comparisons between them and the characters of games past made the disconnect all the more difficult to overcome. While the standard bar set by previous works is to make characters into caricatures of horror movie tropes and to satirize the genre as a whole, one can only go through that same gimmick so many times before the wanderlust begins to wear off. That said, the game still maintained a level of grim fun as I found myself replaying the game multiple times over the weekend of release, learning new secret paths and figuring out which decisions really made an impact in the long term.

Adding to the replayability are new game modes. I’ve yet to even touch the standard single player mode, electing to share in the fun by playing couch co-op. You can have up to eight friends play with you and while you can decide for yourselves who gets which character, you can also select “quick start” and the game will randomly decide which characters are split among the players. While on a first time playthrough this can be fun, you’ll learn that screen time is not split evenly. On our first playthrough, my partner ended up playing the entire third act of the game themselves with my characters only showing up as NPC’s or for quick check-ins. And considering the entirety of the game can take around eight hours, that was a very frustrating experience after having spent $80 dollars. $70 of which were for the PS5 game itself, and the extra $10 were for DLC that has since been postponed until August.

Another new game mode is “Movie Night Mode” where players can make predetermined choices and simply watch the game play out. While certain collectibles and scenes are taken out of the game, it can be fun to watch different scenes play out without the tedious walking around. While the base options such as “Everyone Lives” & “Everyone Dies” seemed boring, there are two features that immediately stood out. “Directors Chair” allows the player(s) to decide the personality types of all nine characters, determining how well they perform quick time events, how well they perform in high pressure situations, how vigilant they are in looking for clues, and how aggressive or diplomatic they are when speaking with other characters. There was also an option for the Deluxe Edition called “Gorefest” which promises to show you the goriest version of the game possible. This game overall is not for the squeamish but there were quite a few moments that made myself gag and look away.

As far as characters and their interpersonal relationships, the game teases a tangled web of love, lust, and unrequited feelings but once the action begins to ramp up most of these emotions are forgotten and are easily replaced with adrenaline and trauma. Performance wise, Supermassive used 2K Game’s financial backing to get an all star cast. While David Arquette was criminally underused (hanging around just long enough to be considered more than a mere cameo) Brenda Song shines as Kaitlyn, the girl with an attitude who knows how to handle a car and a gun with skill. One could say that the majority of women in this game were handled very well with diverse persona’s but the same could not be said for the men. Justice Smith’s performance came across as very stiff and lacking in any emotion or tone throughout the majority of the game, which is a shame as his performances in Detective Pikachu & Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is evidence that he is a terrific actor. Evan Evagora’s performance as Nick featured a weak and inconsistent accent, not even hinting that the young man was supposed to be Australian. Jacob & Dylan both come across as potential frat bro stereotypes, that are teased at having their depth explored, just to be washed away by the action sequences. Ted Raimi easily stood out for his role as Travis, the cop who seems to know more than he lets on, but there are inconsistencies with the characters body language and facial cues that left me wondering if the actor was given the whole script or simply working scene by scene.

All in all this game features terrible acting (save a couple of good performances,) high accessibility, retread story beats, fun references to other horror movies (Evil Dead, anyone?) and can make for a fun game/movie night for you and all your friends. It may have its faults but in a way it also gives it the same charm as a really bad horror movie. You laugh when you’re not supposed to, but you’re still having a good time.

I’ll give this game a solid 7 out of 10.