Quantum Break
In my ongoing efforts to 100% as many titles in my Steam library as possible, I revisited this part of the Remedy Connected Universe. Or… not-part of it, I suppose.
Below is an automated copy of my Quantum Break Steam review, which was published there on 2024-09-08. My total playtime is 24.1 hours.
Originally played through this once in 2016 shortly after the Steam release – enjoyed it then already, and coming back to it to clean up the remaining achievements in a second run almost a decade later was still a blast. It’s certainly not without flaws, but it was interesting to look at through the perspective of Remedy progressing from Alan Wake through Quantum Break into Control. Their story-telling and world-building is amazing and QB is no exception.
The gunfight sequences are the best part. Controls aren’t perfect here either but it’s just too satisfying to use the Chronon powers to not enjoy the action. The exploration platforming segments lack that bonus, but for me personally they never were too long or convoluted to become annoying. Unless the story sucks you in and you’re happy to learn more via the collectibles, you might find those segments less appealing.
It’s terrible that the TV show segments can only be streamed on PC, and they certainly wouldn’t win an Emmy – but for a video game from 2016 they are incredibly well done and I didn’t even have the impulse to skip them in my second playthrough. Ultimately your enjoyment of the game will highly depend on how much the story and characters connect with you – more so than with Control, in which I felt the gameplay alone carried more of the game. I personally loved the QB story, so I highly recommend the game and am rather sad that thanks to licensing complexities we’ll likely never see a sequel.
Warning: I had an unfortunate bug that randomly changed difficulty from Hard to Normal after a few chapters, so I had to replay a bit more than intended for the difficulty achievement. Make sure to check after every chapter if you’re going for that as well.