The Quarry

THE QUARRY (2022) was a super cool game. It is a game with many different choices and pathways to choose from, a game that sure keeps you guessing, with many twists and turns along the way. It was a fun play.

The premise of The Quarry takes place at the end of summer in Hackett Summer Camp, after some counselors (Laura & Max) have mysteriously gone missing. When the sun goes down on the last night of summer camp, seven teenage counselors (Jacob, Emma, Ryan, Kaitlyn, Abigail, Dylan, Nick) are plunged into an unpredictable night of horror and have to try to survive a night in the quarry.

Overall, the game was a fun horror game, more thriller than hardcore scary. If you like mysteries, walking simulators, choice-driven, narrative-driven, horror thriller games, with a good throwback to the teen horror movies haydays of old...then you'll really enjoy this. You never really know till the end what's quite going on...Psychos, Monsters, Paranormal events? Who knows? It's all fun and games till you can't survive The Quarry...

STORY: 8/10 GAMEPLAY: 9/10 GRAPHICS: 8/10 ART DESIGN: 9/10 MUSIC: 8/10 OVERALL RATING: 8.5.

In 2015 Supermassive Games released Until Dawn and brought a new level of interactive horror to gamers. With the release of The Quarry, the company has taken the genre to a new level thanks in large part to the power of the new generation of gaming systems and graphic cards.

Unlike Until Dawn which was a PS4 exclusive, The Quarry is available on multiple platforms.

Using the same motion capture and a star-laden cast of Until Dawn, players are introduced to a group of councilors who have just seen their campers head home at the end of the summer.

Eager to get home and on with their college plans and lives, things take an unexpected turn when Jacob (Zach Tinker) decides to disable their van in the hopes that by staying an extra night he can convince Emma (Halston Sage), to not end their relationship which she viewed as a summer fling and with four states between them for school, something that cannot be maintained.

Despite the warnings of camp owner Chris (David Arquette) to stay inside with the doors locked, the kids decide to hold one more party and this is when things start to unravel. Players will take control of various players at random points of the story and this enables players to explore, gather clues, interact with objects and use weapons in rare instances.

The story is told over 10 chapters mainly set in one evening and the dangers that lurk are brutal and graphic when they arrive which means that stumbling around in the dark as the game often requires can have deadly results.

Players will have the option to make choices at several points during their gameplay and they can range from the tone used to answer a question or if they wish to run or hide from danger. There are other options as well as the intensity rises which all will change how the story unfolds as the game is based on branching storylines where who lives and who dies can change with each time through the story.

While there were elements where it seemed that I was stumbling in the dark trying to find where I was supposed to go and that large segments at times left me with little to do but watch the action and only occasionally pick a response when I had to move and make some rapid choices on directions and hotkeys, the game really drew me in.

The cast is strong and features Ariel Winter, Ted Raimi, Miles Robbins, Brenda Song, and Lance Henriksen amongst others and aside from one character who delivered his lines in an annoying monotone which sounded like they were delivered through a clenched jaw with a head cold, the voice acting is solid and above what one might expect in a game of this sort.

Graphically the game shined on a PS5 and being able to really enjoy the character animations helped me immerse myself in the story.

Since death is a part of the game, players are given three lives which will allow them to rewind the game and try to save the character. While it usually goes just before their passing, one did back me up a full chapter which I had to replay in order to get back to the next which also had to be replayed only to have the same fate befall the character.

In the end, The Quarry is a triumph of interactive storytelling and is an engaging and compelling tale with a strong cast. It will be interesting to see what Supermassive will do next but The Quarry is a game well worth your time.

4 stars out of 5.

Don't get me wrong, i loved this game from start to finish, it just has a few problems that ultimately lead to a disappointing conclusion to some playthroughs.

What it gets right: the characters are fantastically acted and felt realistic, making me genuinely scared to get them killed, the graphics are amazing and a massive step up from previous titles, the soundtrack is great, and the antagonists and settings are pretty scary and tense. I also love how many different paths you can take - it's very fleshed out with many different choices that impact heavily on the game. Many people complain that the game is too cutscene focused and doesn't have enough gameplay, but that honestly didn't bother me, it just made it more immersive.

However, I've heard this game got quite a lot of content cut, which really shows, as it gets somewhat messy the longer it goes on for. It also seems that having 9 main protagonists was a little ambitious, as half of them eventually become irrelevant, and really don't get as much screen time as some of the others do. One of the characters is even completely cut from the story less than half way in, then appears briefly at the very end, a very big waste. There are also some unlikeable characters, who don't get any chance to develop because they get constantly sidelined and there's just no room to expand their arcs. Because of how many paths you can take, some scenes can feel quite disjointed and rushed, especially towards the end.

Another piece of criticism is that it follows too closely from until dawn, which doesn't bother me that much as UD is a fantastic game, but it did make some parts quite predictable. My final complaint is that it has so so much replay value, but it's just a slog sitting through hours of cutscenes you've already seen, as there's no way to skip through them.

Overall, a solid game which is entertaining, immersive and scary, which so much content due to the all the different paths you can take. However, main characters getting forgotten and sidelined really lowered the quality for me and led to a disappointing conclusion. Not worth its very high price in my opinion, but still a great game.

Played it two times now. The first time with two Friends via Couch-Coop and let me tell you, that's the best way to play it. The monster-design is a little bit disappointing and feels like they reused the wendigo design from Until Dawn and changed it a little bit. The characters are so well written and the story is gripping. We had such a blast unraveling the mystery of what happened and what kind of monster is hunting you.

Also Kaitlyn is best girl!

Although some may say that its bland, I don't think so at all! It was a very fun experience with a lot of replayability! I loved all the different way the characters could die, and I liked the twist. Definitely a successor to Until Dawn, and I loved that about it because I loved Until Dawn. Overall, this game is a nice horror game that can be played for hours without getting bored. I really enjoyed the settings, choices, characters, story, atmosphere, and pretty much everything about it.