Game Review: ‘The Quarry’

June 11, 2022

Written by Daniel S. Liuzzi

In 2015, the horror gaming world was changed with Until Dawn, a horror game that was more like an interactive movie where the players directed where the story goes either purposely or completely by accident. The team behind the hit, Supermassive Games has gone on to work on the critically acclaimed “Dark Pictures Anthology” series that took the mechanics of Until Dawn and made individual games with unique stories. Supermassive is back with its own tale to tell in the 80s slasher-inspired interactive narrative, The Quarry.

The Quarry follows a group of “Teenage” camp counselors who have to stay the night at the campgrounds after their ride out is disabled. Ignoring advice about staying indoors, the “Kids” throw themselves a party that attracts the attention of someone…or something, in the woods resulting in them fighting to survive till morning.

 

 

 

 

Now onto the game itself but first I want to give 2K and Supermassive Games a big thank you for making this review possible! The game’s controls are easy to use and remember as thankfully there’s not a whole lot you can really do as mostly the controls are just for moving your character, inspecting items, and using buttons/sticks for quick-time events.

The game visually is stunning and atmospheric may it be early on in the game when it’s day, or later on when it’s night, some graphics render in slowly but not terribly to the point that the story carries on with blurred scenery. The animations of the characters are smooth and their facial animations look as real as you can get in video games a great testament to bringing the actor’s likeness to their characters.

When it comes to gameplay, as mentioned above about the controls, there’s not much you can do besides exploring, the best thing I like about The Quarry is that you can customize the quick-time events to either keep them as they are OR set them up in a way where all you do is sit back and watch OR gives you plenty to time to react.

When it comes to the cast, the voice acting is top-notch don’t get me wrong, but I am a bit confused by our main cast of camp counselors. The official description of the game says they’re teens, but in the game, references were made that they were adults (at least College age) but the actors playing them are in their mid-20s and early-30s so it’s hard for me to play this, and seeing the characters dressed as highschoolers, acting like high schoolers, but with the face and voices of actors who are not teenagers reminds me of that bit from 30 Rock.

Overall, I really enjoyed playing The Quarry, if you’re a fan of Until Dawn or the “Dark Pictures Anthology” then this is for you. The cinematic feel, stunning visuals, amazing sound design, great voice acting, and appearances by horror legends like Lance Henriksen, Lin Shaye, Ted Raimi, and David Arquette are sure to entice you along with the replayability being high as you can go back and try different paths and try to find all the secrets that The Quarry holds!

On my scale of 1-10, The Quarry is 9.5!

The Quarry is out now on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X/S, and PC.

 

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