For many, games like The Quarry, are nothing more than a playable movie, with the odd bit of action and overall a boring experience. For others, they’re more immersive, fun and intense than any hectic first-person shooter.
Like any genre, there’s plenty of examples of good and bad executions of this new ‘choose your own adventure’ genre, and The Quarry definitely belongs on the good side of that spectrum. Where games like Heavy Rain started with the opening ideas of the genre, The Quarry has finessed those ideas and executed them in such a way you’ll be worrying about your decisions long after you’ve made them, and come the end of the game, wanting to replay and try to do things differently.
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The Quarry – Make Your Decision. Survive Or Die.
If you’re not familiar with the recently released game, The Quarry was developed by Supermassive Games, at this point a developer well-versed in this genre with Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology just some of their extensive ‘choose your own adventure’ library. Whilst their other entries have been met with a mixture of reactions from fans and critics alike, The Quarry is one that is almost unanimously loved by all and for good reason.
“It’s late summer in the remote forests of upstate New York, and the teen counselors of Hackett’s Quarry have the camp to themselves for one final night. That means no kids, no adults, and no rules. In this thrilling cinematic tale, you control the fates of all nine camp counselors as their party plans unravel into an unpredictable night of horror. With life-or-death decisions around every turn, the choices you make will determine how the story unfolds.”
The opening couple of chapters of the game feel quite slow, but that doesn’t last for long, as chapter-after-chapter, the stakes get higher and the lives of the counsellors are in your hands. From trying to find a bit of firewood for a party, to fighting for their lives, you’ll be taking control of the counsellors on the worst night of their lives, and it is down to you to ensure it isn’t their last.
There’s no one main character of the game, instead flitting between each of the group at different times, and in these changes of character come the opportunity to find out more about their motivations, interests and love lives, and also to push them in whatever direction you’d like. Want to intentionally put counsellors at odds and have them act selfishly in regards to saving themselves? You can. Want them to be one group that wants to save one another no matter what? You can.
This is pushed even further by the couch coop mode in the game, now a staple of Supermassive Games, having previously been seen in The Dark Pictures Anthology. You and a group of friends can each play as one of the counsellors, which as you’re playing through the game means your decisions can have some dire consequences for your friends.
The Quarry naturally brings together all the best bits from supernatural horrors, slashers and teen rom-coms to give you an experience unlike any other available right now, and whatever you decide to do, there is no wrong answer or decision.
As a whole, The Quarry is truly a beautiful game to look at, whether it’s the gorgeous player models, the woods surrounding Hackett’s Quarry or the various inside locations you’ll visit, it’s a pleasure to play, and one of the best looking games out there right now.
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Boasting 186 unique endings, there is plenty of replayability available in the game, and with some truly graphic and horrible deaths available to your group of counsellors, it’s fair to assume you’d want to play through a few times, if only just to see who you can get to survive or even who you’d want to ensure doesn’t. After all, with certain choices you can make certain characters thoroughly unlikeable and at that point a grisly, gory death would be fitting..
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