The Quarry Review

"Howling Night"

Campaign

July 3, 2022 at 8:37pm
By Jason Stettner

This is an interactive horror experience with a focus on cinematic moments that are strung together with controlled gameplay segments. It’s split into differing chapters which all feature fresh perspectives. There are nine counselors that you control as you play the game and their fate is entirely up to you.

It’s about the decisions you make and the actions you take along the way. You get to know these individuals as the narrative progresses and you can end up with a couple hundred different endings that are possible. It really is quite varied in terms of how everything ends up going, but your play experience will likely be similar when you go at it multiple times.

You can play the game traditionally as a single player setup, or you can enjoy multiplayer choices. With that, the online multiplayer wasn’t available at the time of the review, but local choices are available. There’s also a more of a watch mode if you don’t really care much for gameplay.

It’s a neat addition, and makes sense for the type of story heavy experience that the game is. Anyways, the story is set with a bit of a prologue that sets the stage for the atmosphere. You get to meet a couple counselors and get a feel for things prior to the core part of the story starting. It’s a neat area, and it feels very traditional.

That being said, doing so sets up a later portion that somewhat impacted the pacing towards the end of the game. I won’t dive in too far as I like to keep things like this game spoiler free. That aside, it’s decently lengthy being about several hours per play and you really do get a feel for the motivations of the group you’re playing as.

You see varying perspectives and will choose their path forward. They hit the clichés well, but also do mix things up a bit. I was actually almost disappointed that this didn’t quite hit the horror genre or well area of horror that I thought it would be. It makes sense considering the past of what this studio has put together, but I really was hoping for more of a traditional slasher after the opening of the game.

Gameplay

As mentioned, most of the game is cinematics. This is fine for me as I enjoy these types of games, but I do know that the style won’t be for everyone. When you are playing, you’ll be working through largely linear areas and dealing with quick time events.

There will be collectibles to find that help build out the story and the odd tarot card that may let you have a glimpse into the future. Once again, your choices and action will literally decide the fate of this group. The cast is not safe, at all. The performances with that, were quite excellent. I was very pleased with the direction of the acting and the visual quality.

They really did an amazing job with the character capture as these actors were placed perfectly within the world. It feels movie like in that regard, it was great. Now, with that we do get a native 4k resolution at 30fps. The lower frame rate won’t be for everyone, but if you think about it as being a movie then it’s fine I would imagine.

Going back to the visuals I thought the world looked great. They used the limited spaces effectively and did send you to some iconic horror spaces. There’s a good sense of tension, minor comedic bits and a fun group to see play off one another.

The Conclusion

The Quarry is an enjoyable and solid horror experience that didn’t quite dive into the genre I was hoping it would have tackled. It really did steer off in an odd way that I didn’t quite love. That being said, it was still fun and at times rather spooky. There are some pacing issues later on and I did feel that some of the narrative moments clashed with choices I was trying to make. As though it was trying to steer away from some choices I had decided upon.

The visuals of the game are superb, felt very movie like and it all handled rather well. It had some great performances, neat moments and solid surprises the whole way through. I hope to see similar games like this going forward as I do certainly enjoy what this team puts together. That being said, I hope to be able to skip the credits next time, or at least speed through them faster.

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The Quarry Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by RainMaker

Rating Overall: 7.2