9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "This is what you need to know." 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "Time broke, a growing fracture leading to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the end of time." 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "And of course, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 time travels." 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "Jack!" 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "Going too fast for you?" 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Quantum Break is the latest third-person 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 shooter from Remedy, the same studio that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that brought us Max Payne way back in 2001, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and boy, does that lineage show. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Like that game, this one revolves around a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 flashy gimmick that serves to differentiate 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 its gameplay a bit from that of other, more 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 straightforward third-person shooters. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And like Max Payne, as well as Remedy’s 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 2010 game Alan Wake, it stars a dude 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who cannot stop narrating his story for us. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Sadly, Quantum Break’s story is just a mess. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Because of reasons, time is fractured, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 stuttering with increasing frequency and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 possibly approaching a point at which 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it just breaks down completely. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Different men have different ideas 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 about how to deal with this problem, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and they fight with each other while 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 uttering standard lines of dialogue like 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 “It doesn’t have to end like this.” 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There are very few clear rules established 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in Quantum Break about how time works. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It just behaves in whatever way it needs 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to behave to throw the characters into 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 another complication or to give the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 main character new powers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Things just happen because they’re 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 convenient for the story, so there’s 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 nothing clearly at stake. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You might argue that the quality of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the story in a game like this isn’t all 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that important, but the thing is that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Quantum Break really wants you to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 care about its story. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You see, Quantum Break is one part game, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 one part live action TV show, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and a good chunk of your time is spent 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 watching the four live-action episodes 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that play out over the course of the game. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And they’re just such generically bad TV, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 filled with cliché dialogue and cookie 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 cutter characters, right down to the comic 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 relief tech geek hacker type that seems 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to be a necessity these days in every 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 mediocre crime drama. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There are a few fine actors here, including 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Lance Reddick, who proves he can bring 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 gravitas to even the goofiest material. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But the most that decent acting can do 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 here is serve as a smokescreen to distract 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 us from just how bad the story actually is. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Quantum Break is, at its core, a tale of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 three men. You play as Jack Joyce, a man 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who comes away from a time travel mishap 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with the ability to manipulate time in specific ways. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It’s sort of like last year’s adventure game 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Life Is Strange, only instead of using its 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 concept to explore relationships and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 serious, real-life issues like bullying and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 suicide, Quantum Break just uses it as a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 source for spectacle. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Jack’s brother Will is an eccentric genius, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and the villain, Paul Serene, is a powerful 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 CEO of a massive corporation named Monarch. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Both Will and Paul’s characters are just 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 recycled archetypes without any new flavoring. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Quantum Break doesn’t even try to break 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from traditional male-dominated convention here. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The TV show portion of this game also 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 spends a lot of time on a supporting character 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 named Liam Burke. Burke gets into weird 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 escalator kick fights! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Burke unleashes manly screams while 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 strangling someone to death in a hospital 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as a bunch of people just stand around and watch! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Burke has a pregnant wife who he would 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 do anything—ANYTHING—to protect. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Games and other mainstream media often 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 reinforce the false notion of women as fragile 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and men as protectors whose role and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 responsibility requires them to do anything 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to either protect or avenge their families 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 —Max Payne was definitely in this mold, too— 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but Burke is a particularly bland and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 formulaic take on this character type, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and that’s really saying something. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In Quantum Break, men are the prime actors 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and doers. Men are the ones with vision and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ambition, who set things in motion and who 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 then do whatever they can to make things 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 go their way. The only female character 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who gets any real development is Beth Wilder, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who helps Jack for reasons that aren’t 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 immediately clear. In one of the game’s 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 only moments that even come close to generating 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 actual interest in its characters, we do 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 eventually get to know Beth’s history and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 her motivations. Her main purpose here, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 though, is to serve as a love interest for 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Jack, and she’s ultimately more important 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 for the emotional impact she has on him 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 than she is as an individual in her own right. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It’s also worth noting that like most of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the enemies, Beth works security for the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Monarch corporation. She must be the only 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 woman on a team otherwise made up of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 hundreds of men, because there are no 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 female combatants in the game. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 As for the combat, there’s a certain novelty 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 for a little while to the spectacle of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Quantum Break’s action. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Seeing environments shatter in slow motion 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and seeing people get stuck in time looks pretty cool. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But that’s all it does. Quantum Break’s 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 structure feels overly familiar and predictable, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from the heavy enemies it introduces with 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the weak points on their backs to the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 checkpoints near the end in which it throws 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 so many enemies at you that you just 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 want it all to be over. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It’s unfortunate that Quantum Break’s 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ambition to tell video game stories in a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 new way is wasted on a story that doesn’t 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 do anything new. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The game doesn’t seem to care if it makes 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 any sense or if its story actually tries to say anything. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 All it cares about is being “awesome” in 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the most insubstantial way possible, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in the sense that it’s “awesome” to watch 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a locomotive crash again and again and again. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There’s nothing underneath. Maybe, maybe 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in 2001 when Max Payne came out, a flashy 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 gimmick was enough to make the mere act 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of filling hundreds of dudes with bullets 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 more than a hollow exercise. But not now. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We’re not actually stuck in time. But playing 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Quantum Break, it sure feels like we are.