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Apr 16, 2020 · In “The Quarry,” Shea Whigham stars as a fugitive wanted for murder and arson who, in a moment of anger, kills the preacher (Bruno Bichir) who picked him up on a West Texas roadside, trying to...
- Scott Teems
Apr 17, 2020 · In “The Quarry,” a preacher by the name of David Martin (Shea Whigam) arrives in the small and economically devastated West Texas town of Bevel to become the latest person to head up its sole and sparsely attended church.
- A fun, bloody thrill ride on your first playthrough.
- The Quarry Gameplay Screenshots
- The Movie Within the Movie
- Death Rewind
- What outcome would you aim for on your first run?
- Verdict
By Thomas Wilde
Updated: Jun 17, 2022 7:28 pm
Posted: Jun 8, 2022 5:44 pm
Like many of developer Supermassive’s previous games, The Quarry is clearly made both by and for people who love horror movies. From the start, it slowly builds tension and atmosphere, getting you invested by constantly asking you to make small decisions that will guide its teenage cast of potential murder victims. By the time the blood started flying, every choice felt like one more step in a rolling disaster, and that made it nearly impossible to put down. When I went back to replay it again, however, it was impossible to ignore just how non-interactive much of The Quarry actually is. As a spiritual sequel to Until Dawn, it's a better movie, but a worse game.
The title location of The Quarry is a summer camp in upstate New York, Hackett's Quarry, that's slowly falling apart. It's initially designed to look like the most postcard-worthy version of itself, backlit by warm sunlight and spread out across approximately a billion acres of natural splendor. It’s a Hollywood version of the perfect summer experience, with colorful cinematography that makes the whole camp look like somebody’s cherished memory. Then the sun goes down, the woods get dangerously quiet, the rot gets more obvious, and the nightmare starts.
You play as each of the nine camp counselors, controlling one at a time at various points in the roughly 10-hour campaign. You can influence how its events play out through exploration scenes, conversation choices, quick time events, stealth, simple combat, and Mass Effect-style interruptions where you have a short window in which to make a sudden move. There are a lot of accessibility options built into The Quarry that let you adjust the difficulty of all of these actions, or even switch some of them to always automatically succeed. There's also a Movie Mode that lets the story play out without any interactivity at all, headed towards one of a few different preset conclusions. While you'll see most of what there is to see in Movie Mode, you will miss a couple of major events, many optional ones, and a lot of story context that can only come from playing manually.
You don't have to have twitch reflexes to get through The Quarry.
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While I was never personally interested in using Movie Mode, I can appreciate that it exists. Even without it, you don't have to have solid twitch reflexes to get through The Quarry in the way you did with parts of Until Dawn. In fact, there are several scenes where failing something like a quick time event doesn't necessarily have a bad outcome, which makes them more like snap decisions rather than mechanical challenges.
The primary issue with The Quarry is that it’s less of a game and more of a lightly interactive movie for most of its running time. You can go for surprisingly long stretches without having to make a meaningful choice or take direct control of a character. All you're asked to do is watch.
The Quarry is deliberately meant to have a lighter tone than Supermassive's other horror games, in a way that its director compared to Scream, which is backed up by the casting of David Arquette as Hackett’s Quarry’s way-too-into-this-whole-thing head counselor. It's very self-aware right from the start, with a cast of characters who have all seen at least one horror movie before and are acting accordingly.
At the same time, The Quarry's storyline feels like Supermassive's learned a lot from its past projects and is putting that experience to work. It feels more confident, with a more solid, coherent plot structure. There are still plenty of twists, but they’re carefully calculated, and a few actually managed to take me by surprise.
The Quarry's Death Rewind feature, which is unlocked after your first clear or offered as a bonus for buying the deluxe edition, gives you three "lives" over the course of a single run. Each one lets you redo the most crucial decision that would've otherwise led to a playable character's death. However, that does mean you can be jumping very far ba...
Everyone lives
Everyone dies
My favorite character lives; everyone else is expendable
Let the chips fall where they may
Other (comment below!)
The cast of motion-captured actors are a particular highlight. A couple of them do still get relatively little to do, and I'd hoped to see more of Lance Hendriksen’s creepy backwoods hunter, but most of the characters are genuinely likable and you're given plenty of time to get to know them. Ariel Winter, Siobhan Williams, and Justice Smith as Abigail, Laura, and Ryan, respectively, are all particular standouts, and Brenda Song as Kaitlyn somehow manages to end up as the biggest badass in the cast.
The Quarry is worth playing at least once, but when compared to Until Dawn, it's one step forward and one step back. It features a solid script performed by a great cast, with a slow-burn story that you can guide to a few different satisfying (or anticlimactic) conclusions. It's not as interactive as I'd like it to be, though, and that makes replay...
- Thomas Wilde
Jun 8, 2022 · ‘The Quarry’ review: gleefully gory teen horror schlock. Despite a slow start, Supermassive’s creature feature delivers real choice. By Louise Blain. 8th June 2022. Guildford-based developer...
- Louise Blain
Jul 15, 2022 · The Quarry is a fantastic adventure title as well as a cinematic marvel. It'll make you jump and squeal as you uncover the mysteries of Hacketts Quarry. With excellent QTEs and brilliant characters, you'll love every second of this creepy title. + Amazing cinematic. + Excellent graphics. + Touching and well-considered audio. + Responsive controls.
Jun 8, 2022 · Here is GameSpew's review of The Quarry, the next story-driven horror from Supermassive Games, and it may be the best one yet.
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Jun 10, 2022 · The Quarry. Credit: 2K. Back in May, I was privy to a preview for The Quarry, Supermassive Games’ new teen horror interactive slasher movie, and I walked (ran?) away wanting more. More...
