Supermassive Games slowly refining their idiosyncratic interactive horror movie series has been a joy to watch. Okay sure, Little Hope was a dud, but I’ve enjoyed the hell out of Until Dawn, Man of Medan, and House of Ashes. The Quarry might be their most successful title yet, putting players in charge of a group of teenagers struggling to survive the night in a 1980s-inspired summer camp bloodbath.
If you’ve played any of the ‘Dark Pictures Anthology’ you’ll be right at home here, with the game a mixture of third-person exploration, QTEs, and dialogue and action choices. Like Supermassive’s other games there’s a dizzying amount of variation in each playthrough, with the story able to wrap up with all the teenagers alive, all of them worm food, and any number of survivors in between.
Without wanting to head into spoiler country, The Quarry tells a decent horror tale that binds together a couple of supernatural threats into a cohesive tale. All the teenagers begin as faintly annoying stereotypes but prove to have hidden depths when the chips are down, with the standout Justice Smith’s moody Ryan.
However, it’s at the wrinkly end of the spectrum that things really shine, with the game boasting the cult horror credentials of David Arquette, Lin Shaye, Lance Henrikson, Ted Raimi, and – be still my beating heart – Grace Zabriskie. It’s a testament to Supermassive’s performance capture tech that all these actors’ quirks and tics remain intact and, purely at a base level, I can never be truly mad at a game that includes Zabriskie giving it some welly into the camera.
But, even after so many stabs at this specific minigenre, there are still a couple of kinks for Supermassive to iron out. At the core is the tension of whether a game that will be beaten in about 10 hours is really worth £70.
The argument is that The Quarry has insanely high production values, with some moments approaching photorealism. That costs a lot of money, though there is something perverse in using so much computing power to emulate the style of a low-budget creature feature. I don’t think length equals quality, so I’m happy to shell out full price for a short but memorable game.
However, this is clearly a concern for the developers. If The Quarry were a movie it’d be over and done in 90 minutes. But, as a £70 video game, that just won’t fly, and there’s a feeling that it has to be 10 hours minimum.
The impact can be felt all over. For example, the pre-credits scene is maybe thirty minutes long and it’s at least another two hours before any real scares. That’s a lot of time to spend hanging around with some teenagers as they make small talk with one another. This distended storytelling inevitably plays havoc with the pacing, most keenly felt in a late-game flashback that lasts a whole damn hour.
That compounds the other problem. Supermassive’s games are best experienced in local multiplayer with friends taking control of various characters. You need to be able to finish the game with the same group of people, but convincing people to spend most of a day hanging out playing a single video game is an uphill climb (fortunately I was off work and a teacher friend was on summer holidays).
If The Quarry was roughly movie-length it’d be a blast. As it is, it’s more like asking your friends to pop over to watch a full season of a TV show. Then again, if you trimmed off the fat would anyone really pay full price for a three-hour game?
It’s a dilemma that’s unlikely to be solved anytime soon. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed The Quarry (even if our first playthrough ended disastrously after I chose not to shoot the fucking monster when given the chance) and am very glad these games exist.
Can Supermassive Games ever resolve this price/value conundrum? I’d much rather shorter and cheaper games that emulate movie-length storytelling than fun but bloated ten-hour experiences. Here’s hoping they continue to polish their skills when the next Dark Pictures Anthology game The Devil in Me drops later this year.
Perhaps it’s a testament that though I’ve always got a whole bunch of quibbles with Supermassive’s games, I’ll always be there on day one. There just isn’t anybody else out there doing anything remotely on this level.
Pixel Hunted 