The Quarry Review – Screaming Until Dawn

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Supermassive Games
Rating: Mature

Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn was an exceptional horror experience that cut deep with narrative choice, allowing the player to determine which teenagers survived a night of hell. The developer's follow-up, The Dark Pictures Anthology, delivered plenty of scares to run from, but scaled back the number of choices and was a huge step back. The studio’s latest game, The Quarry, again places decision-making in the spotlight. This design pays off handsomely in a game loaded with shocking twists and turns, and a spiderweb of paths leading to 186 potential endings. Even though The Quarry is technically a spiritual successor to Until Dawn, this is the sequel we’ve been dying to play.

The setting screams of a love letter to horror cinema. The final day of summer camp at Hackett’s Quarry is supposed to be about tearful goodbyes between friends and flings, but a broken-down van gives the teenage counselors one more day to party together without worrying about the kids. Supermassive uses this booze-filled bonfire moment to establish relationships, taking the time to get to know each counselor while giving the player the chance to define how they act through meaningful input.

A wonderful licensed soundtrack enhances the emotional movements

Conversations between two characters are frequently interrupted to give the player two lines of thinking – such as “assertive” or “apologetic” – to determine what happens next. Relationships are strengthened or weakened depending on the response, and they could lead to dramatic tonal shifts that create alternative narrative paths. Environment exploration and a few brief shooting sequences also bring different outcomes and are enjoyable in their own right.

Supermassive does an excellent job of telling you when you’ve moved the story in another direction, but some decisions are too vague and can lead to unexpected results and perhaps even a counselor’s death. Halfway through the game, I was faced with a choice to open a trap door or grab a bag – both giving little context of what might happen – and one of those decisions led to a character becoming a midnight snack.

Supermassive knows that some choices are coin flips and has baked in a silly “use a life” system to undo them within the special edition (which I played) and for additional playthroughs. For the entire game, you get three lives, which are three too many, as the most vital element of Supermassive’s horror series is making choices and living with their consequences. The life system steals some of the intensity and will likely lead to more players having better outcomes at game’s end. One of my favorite questions I asked people after playing Until Dawn was, “How many survived?” The answers were all over the map. I recommend playing the standard edition (which gives you just one life), or ignoring the lives to truly see how your choices play out.

QTEs deliver potential fail points in action sequences but are telegraphed far too long and are a sinch to complete. They are shockingly ineffective and slow the frantic sequences down at critical moments. There isn’t much action out of these button presses, an element of play that is subtly scaled back compared to Until Dawn. For instance, you won't encounter as many "run" or "hide" moments or environmental interactions that change your character's path.

Supermassive has made The Quarry more of a cinematic experience than an interactive one. The lack of control is a little disappointing but keeping the teenagers alive mainly through decisions – of which there is a slew of them – was more than enough to keep me going. Like Until Dawn, I anticipate jumping back in for a second, third, and who knows how many playthroughs to see the different branching paths and conclusions (even if many are just text). Some characters can die early on, and I’m curious where the narrative goes without them along for the ride.

I won’t spoil who or what is after the teenagers, but the survival aspect is thrilling, and figuring out what is truly happening is one of the game’s better hooks. The best part, however, is the counselors. Every character is interesting in their own way, and you get to know them well. Their relationships and ambitions are at the heart of most choices and often conflict with those of other characters. I would often sit and think about how a specific decision may affect someone else at camp.

The story moves at a decent clip and goes to exciting places, yet it can be a headscratcher in logic and clarity. You’ll want to scream at the characters on screen for not doing obvious things, but I suppose that’s a teenage slasher-flick staple and may be by design. You just have to turn off your brain and let the little details go. A character with a life-threatening wound acts like he’s perfectly fine, but that’s how it goes in The Quarry. It’s cheesy, entirely unbelievable, but above all, fun to laugh at as you cheer the characters on.

The teenagers are all flawed and endearing in their unique ways. Supermassive has always assembled great casts, including Academy Award winner Rami Malek in Until Dawn, and that again rings true in The Quarry. The biggest names on the bill are David Arquette and Ted Raimi, but the younger ensemble steals the show. Evan Evagora, Siobhan Williams, Ariel Winter, Justice Smith, and Halston Sage nail their performances, making you want to do everything you can to keep them out of harm’s way one second and then strangle them the next.

Their banter is quite good, and their relationships develop to the point that you can think for the characters and help them grow. Supermassive’s art team also deserves props for bringing their likenesses to life with a frightening degree of realism, capturing little emotions that can hold a character’s true intent for a split second. The darkly lit and nicely designed environments also help to up the tension and give the game a truly cinematic feel. Supermassive even included a movie mode that allows you to put the controller down to sit back and watch randomized decisions play out.

For the core game, I wish more of the action was in the hands of the player, but I can’t deny how enthralling the choices are, especially when they lead to absolute chaos. Once the frantic running through the woods begins, the dark mysteries and thrill of keeping people alive are powerful hooks that will keep you glued in suspense until the credits roll.

Score: 8.5

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Card Shark Review - Bad Luck At The Tables

Reviewed on: Switch
Platform: Switch, PC
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: Nerial

Novel concepts are worth their weight in gold, and Card Shark comes out swinging with an idea you’re unlikely to have encountered before. Set in 18th century France, players take on the role of a destitute and mute drink server who is lifted into high society by a puffed-up card cheat. Along the path to riches, a deep conspiracy is uncovered, touching the lives of everyone in upper-class society, and playing out in backroom parlors, Corsican pirate dens, and royal palaces. It’s a clever and appealing setup, but it can only carry the game so far. With gameplay that feels like a chore from beginning to end, I was eager for this card game to reach its final round.

While early glimpses might suggest this is a game about playing poker or some other familiar game, the card-playing itself is only background. Instead, Card Shark is about jumping from one sleight-of-hand trick or con to the next, fleecing wealthy opponents out of their money, and slipping away before they get wise. You’re not actually playing out the hands and choosing to cheat or not; it’s all about pulling off the ruse, or failing and getting caught.

You gradually learn new tricks and strategies from your mentor, a figure based on the real-life eccentric named Comte de St. Germain. More than two dozen of these tricks come into your repertoire throughout the game, each introduced in the minutes before you’ll need to deploy the trick to cheat your opponents. Unfortunately, almost without exception, I found the various ploys frustrating, tedious, and sometimes difficult to comprehend. These gameplay sequences usually amount to some variation of old-school quick-time events. You must remember a series of controller inputs, time your button presses, and quickly react to onscreen prompts to fool your hapless fellow players.

That means that nearly the entire game is a tutorial, often teaching specific instructions that you’re likely to forget within minutes. The tutorials themselves can be exceedingly infuriating in their own right, as specific strategies are often poorly explained, and you must repeat exacting inputs without mistake before the story progresses.

You might have one trick where you need to mark the cards with a splotch of make-up. Another demands you shuffle high cards into a specific order in the deck. A third might require a glance at an opponent’s card suits while pouring their wine. I could sense the gleeful fantasy of deceit and high-stakes encounters during fleeting moments. But the need for rapid button presses and attention to timing did what QTEs have always done (and likely why they’ve gone out of style): take me out of the experience.

Card Shark layers in another element that undoubtedly aims to invoke excitement in the player, but for me, it only resulted in tension and a lack of desire to invest in the experience. Save game states are applied automatically at every step of an encounter, from gains or losses in your monetary fortunes to death itself. Upon dying, you can “cheat” death or choose to give up your soul and have your save game erased. But none of it ever really matters. A personified “Death” always eventually sends you back, finally tiring of your arrivals and granting another shot at life because they’re weary of seeing you. Fortunes amassed (or not) seem to have little to no impact on the story itself. To paraphrase a well-known show, everything is made up, and the points don’t matter.

Upon repeated failures of a story-essential card game cheating sequence, the game eventually asks if you’d like to skip the strategy and see the story play out. Especially in later multi-step affairs, it became a welcome relief to have the choice, so I’m glad that option exists. But it’s problematic that the gameplay is frustrating enough to warrant such a need in the first place.

Card Shark features an attractive art style, subtle writing, and a promising premise. But I couldn’t get past my dislike of the core gameplay encounters and the endless teaching segments. I applaud the effort to pull together a unique concept, but the accompanying frustrations mean I have to discourage a sit-down at this particular table.

 

Score: 6

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Silt Review - Glittering Through Muck

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Fireshine Games
Developer: Spiral Circus Games
Rating: Teen

The impeccable graphics and thought-provoking narrative shine so brightly in this puzzle/adventure title that the game’s defects, like the frustrating lack of direction, stand out in grimy, stark contrast. The moment I began playing, I was under the aquatic world’s monochromatic and disquieting spell. However, the magic was continuously dispelled as I increasingly encountered imbalanced challenges and tedious objectives.

Silt is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful games I’ve played this year. Its underwater world is brought to life in shades of black, grey, and white. But though the color palette is limited, it is applied masterfully. Inky darkness gives way to foggy gloom, which is pierced by brilliant illumination. The artistic visuals are meticulously detailed. Every feature and figure is shaded and ornamented in ways that make me stop and admire the screen instead of moving to my next objective. One moment, I swim along an ocean floor choked with reeds; in the next, I emerge from the gaping mouth of an inert, needle-fanged monstrosity, and both scenes equally demand my attention. The graphics’ dark and light motifs also spill over wonderfully into the game’s exploration of those themes.

I begin my adventure with a few ominous and poetic lines written across the screen. They are not words of encouragement. Rather, they point the way to power with instructions, ending with the phrase “seal my fate.” It’s a captivating opening. However, more simply put, the object of the game is to solve puzzles and defeat several watery bosses with wit rather than combat in order to bring a mysterious machine to life.

Soon after the words vanish, a diver’s limp silhouette appears and flickers to life as a glowing light fills the helmet. I quickly learned I could force this light from my diver’s form into the body of the surrounding aquatic life, thus gaining their powers until I chose to return to the humanoid swimmer. The implications of manipulating other beings to suit my purposes are unnerving and fascinating. And the game dives even deeper into them as it exploits one thing video games can inspire that other, non-interactive, forms of entertainment can’t: guilt.

To solve puzzles that let my swimmer move to the next objective, I often have to possess the fish around me. In the beginning, that meant borrowing a toothy fish’s fangs to cut a progress-blocking rope. However, as the game goes on, I increasingly have to put the creatures I control into harm’s way and, eventually, outright sacrifice them for my greater good. Encountering a puzzle that required me to lead a school of fish into the hungry maws of carnivorous plants, I hesitate. Realizing I have no choice if I want to go on, I doom the trusting, harmless creatures. My growing suspicion that I’m not the good guy here is confirmed, and I love it. It’s satisfying whenever developers take advantage of gaming’s ability to make me, the player, complicit in what is happening, and it’s a perfect tool to draw me further into Silt’s mysterious and eerie plot.

Sadly, these moments of beauty and contemplation are soon muddied by poor design. Eschewing any form of HUD to leave the art uncovered makes for a stunning experience, but in this case, it also contributes to the player’s confusion. Problem-solving is vital in a puzzle-centric game like this, but many times in my playthrough, I just couldn’t figure out what to do next. A helpful nod from the camera or an extra bit of lighting might have been an enormous help, but I frequently found myself floating, aimless and irritated, through the world for any clue as to what I should be doing.

Many challenges are also tedious. For example, there’s a room where I could possess a stingray-like creature with a teleportation dash I could use to fly past several predators, grab an exploding creature, and clear the dangerous path for my diver. Annoyingly, I had to go through the long process of taking control of each stingray and destroying each predator one by one, doing the same things over and over again before moving on. It took an aggravatingly long time, and anytime I failed – which felt unearned most of the time – I needed to start it all over again.

Because of everything that is spectacular about Silt – its stunning art style, atmospheric environments, and pensive story – I wanted to love this game. It just wouldn’t let me. Exasperating puzzles with little guidance frequently slowed my progress to a halt and left me banging my head against a wall. Even so, I still encourage players to pick up the title, if for no other reason than to experience so gorgeous a game.  

Score: 7.75

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