Analyzing Quantum Break's Review Scores - The Lobby

I agree wholeheartedly. Won't say it's a bad game. When I went to the store I bought it at and they asked me what I thought. I said it was just okay. I also don't understand how anyone could say it's great. I like hearing a new story told, but it wasn't told in a great way.

it sounds like a great redbox game. Im not quite sure how people dump their money into these 8 hour dives and its the hidden factor behind these review scores. One of them started to say it and caught themselves. Time vs value. Too many games out there in every genre w many many hours more content. The order i hear is a great game too. 8 hour joints will never be on top. The vast majority of gamers like to get lost for a month or two into a game, not one night.

@caseyrybek: I don't do favourites - at least not for years already. Using favourites as a yardstick for comparison is a kind of bias.

Also, really, you are comparing Sam Lake and colleagues' writing to Tarantino's when the circumstances between them are so different and many. For one, Sam Lake and colleagues are writing stories for a video game with sci-fi settings, whereas Tarantino is screenwriting for films with a satirical nature.

Having seen the TV shows and the consequences of the "Junction" options, I will agree with the criticism about the story-telling having little "impact". However, I believe that I describe this problem in the game in more concise and less ambiguous ways.

Firstly, the characters which are prominently shown in Joyce's segments, e.g. Wilder, Amaral, Will Joyce, are particularly important, and their roles remain the same regardless of the player's decisions.

However, the ones in the TV shows (e.g. Burke, Winscott, Fiona), when they are involved in Joyce's segments, are practically substitutes for each other when certain roles in Joyce's segments are to be filled. For example, there is a person who will be the voice-in-the-ear for Joyce in the penultimate chapters; this person would either be Winscott or Fiona, depending on the player's actions. If these characters don't get roles in Joyce's segments later, they die ignominiously.

To put things simply, those choices result in differences in the faces or voices of characters who will matter later in Joyce's portion of the game. That's as far as the substance of the choices go.

Just finished act 4 and im loving the game i thought based off this review that the emails were gona bore me to death & the cover system was gona blow but then actually reading the narratives & PAYING ATTENTION to the story they really add into it like when reading beths journal that was intense or finding wills old messages that never got sent to jack & then finding out that you dont need to use cover you rely on your powers this is not a cover shooter. I can't believe gamespot gave street fighter 5 & until dawn higher scores pretty bias since One of the complaints was he completed the game in 10 hours "most likely never fully upgraded his powers or collected all the dialogue" even tho until dawn is only 9 hours long & nothing but narrative which this review considered boring & street fighter 5 A game that launched with matchmaking problems & No vs cpu like what kind of fighting doesn't include that at launch? & still give them both higher scores makes zero sense to me.

I don't see Peter Brown and company bringing up the product placement in the game. Don't they see this as a problem?

The ads don't add anything substantial to the gameplay, and the customer is still playing full price for a license.

I have been a fan of Game Spot since the original Xbox and Playstation 2. This generation, I've noticed a great deal of bias in support of Sony products and for the first time, I have started to look elsewhere for my gaming reviews. I'm glad I made that decision because Quantum Break is a fantastic game! There is no way in hell it deserves a 6. My suspicion that GameSpot is sponsored by Sony is basically confirmed by your review score.

I really miss the days I could come to your site and read an unbiased review.

I'll see you on the flip side fellas. I'ma Kotaku and IGN reader now.

Who on earth would make the argument this game isn't a shooter? Its just not a mandatory stay in cover shooter like Uncharted and Gears.

See here's where your faultering comes from...

First off:
Danny - "Let's talk about the most important thing which is the movement, combat..."
This is COMPLETELY wrong, this game ISN'T about combat, it's about a character driven narrative. It's a "Life Is Strange" on steroids. It might as well be an investigation game, a choose your own path interactive show and for any of you to think otherwise tells me ALREADY why this score is wrong.

Second:
Monarch are not the bad guys. YES, you shoot them and you are fighting against them, but to define Monarch as "bad guys" is just plain stupid. They are a n alternate view on a dying world. THEY are trying to save the world, JUST like you. So to immediately jump into this and call them the bad guys tells me you aren't correctly reviewing a game due to the fact that you don't even UNDERSTAND the game...

Third:
You're complaining about why only certain areas are capable of using your powers and others aren't. Jesus...if you had paid attention to the game instead of checking your Twitter updates at the same time, you would have know that they describe to you...IN DETAIL...why this occurs and why it makes perfect sense for its setting.

God it's ever few seconds I have to pause this...*sigh*..uhh Finally:
You're telling me you don't want to take the time to read documents and explore the world of it's other characters and experience the game for what it's suppose to be? You're telling me you're just looking for the next gun fight? If that IS quite simply the case you must be confused by 80% of the story and that I can see the reasoning behind your review.

It's clear your interest in run n' gun, blow 'em up nonsense is more attuned to you're reviewing and frankly I don't believe you went into this game correctly.

I wonder if anyone who likes Quantum Break even played Alan Wake or the earlier Max Payne games. If anyone did, he/she should notice how far removed Quantum Break is from those games, especially in terms of dialogue and monologue.

Quantum Break's dialogue and monologue feel so crude to me, like they fit better in an action movie. It's hard for me to believe that Sam Lake is the lead writer.

lmao, Xbox fanboys getting salty that their only game until the holidays isn't the GOTY masterpiece they told themselves it would be.

QB is just an OK game. Get over it. :)

I'm so glad I didn't read the review first, and I'm MORE than angry watching this video. This web site has utterly failed me for the last time. I feel like they are completely missing the point of what a video game *review* is supposed to be, and this video highlights those problems so loud and clearly, it's hard to ignore.

Good luck in the future, GameSpot.

Quantum Break is a solid 7.5-8 in my book. Can't wait to play it some more this evening after class.

I'm still trying to figure out why this game received such a low score. Critics shouldn't penalize a hyped game different from an underdog. It clearly happened here. Peter obviously become a lot more critical in his review because it's a milestone that's been hyped since the inception of X1. It's really no different than anything else. When we hear that someone is the "next" Michael Jordan, we will scrutinize every detail of that individual's performance and, most of the time, we'll do this to prove the comparison wrong. What Peter got right and most agree, is this game certainly didn't meet the hype that was pitched to us but it's a great game that should have been reviewed as a game like any other game. Several critics who provided a better balanced review mention this: "apart from it's flaws, it's still a decent game...." or, "this game doesn't break new ground but it's a great experience". regardless if a game is being hyped as a second coming of Christ, there should still be a fair baseline to compare it against. Sam Lake and team at Remedy most certainly have a swagger with how they pitch their games; Phil Spencer talked about it like it was going to convert everyone into XBOX believers. After all of this is said and done, the swagger nor the pitch are justified. But, it's an enjoyable title and triggers promise for what next gen gaming can be. For me, the story was compelling enough to keep me interested in moving forward, although there are too many "narratives" to read. The in between battles are exciting but the upgrading system should have been paced a little better to prevent being completely overpowered before the 3rd Act. I don't care what anyone says, the story WAS NOT sloppy, disjointed, poor quality, etc. It's a perfect story for the how the story is told. I also don't get the complaints about the live action shows. It's obviously not Game of Thrones production quality but it's pretty damn impressive and does enough to connect with the gamer a lot more than many games do. The graphics are spectacular especially when Jack starts to string his powers together. There were many jaw dropping moments because of this and first-time experiences I've had in my 30+ years of gaming. It's also not a "flash over substance" title. If anything, there is too much substance at times. I can't see how this game could receive a score lower than 7. I can see being a passive about this game because it's not for everyone, but being a complete detractor is a mystery. I'm obviously going to keep coming back to Gamespot for their views on games and gaming but question the consistency of how these games are scored.

It really comes down to one thing, some games are scored way too high and some games are scored way too low.

The only reason for this is because some of the reviewers on gamespot are sometimes overly subjective. For instance, you mention forced platforming sections, I can understand you don't like this but some people do like that , especially with the time power twist.

Is it really that big a deal that the character doesn't move with the same fluidity of a multiplayer shooter, this is after all a single player game. Other reviewers actually say the gameplay is quite responsive and original.

Is it really that big a deal that the game needs to played like an action shooter and that the cover system isn't fleshed out, and that you can't use your time powers in every section of the game.

Don't you think the visuals and original gameplay have to carry more weight? You also don't mention the soundtrack, which is a very important part of the game.

The average critic score seems to reflect the quality of this game a lot better, we'll see what the user score does but it looks like you set the bar too high for this game. Of course , if you spoke to another reviewer and he thinks the same thing, and you're one of the first reviewers to put this up, then you just had some bad luck here.

You could avoid this by putting the review up later or be a bit more moderate with your scores. A 7/10 would have been a safer bet and also more reasonable. You would have gotten your message across as well.

When you come home from school with a 6/10 you barely passed, which is kinda harsch for a visual spectacle with original gameplay and a good soundtrack. Even if it is a short game with some gameplay quirks and a lacking story.

Let's be honest, a 6/10 is worth nobodies time, or it is the game can be grabbed for 5-10$.

I have seen more than a few other people play the game without even using the cover system. If they wanted to block the shots of enemies, they have walls, pillars and such other large obstacles interposed between Joyce and enemies to control the volume of incoming fire instead. They also kept mobile, just to match the movement of enemies to avoid getting flanked.

This gives me the impression that the waist-high cover system is redundant. It could have been left out entirely. After all, Payne didn't need it in his games, and Joyce, with his time powers and shit, certainly doesn't need it either. (Heck, both of them are bullet-sponges, especially at the default difficulty - the latter, in particular, can take a few hits while getting to a more advantageous position only to regenerate health later.)

The game could have been more convincingly impressive to some people if Remedy had cut this proverbial fat out.