The Quarry Review: An Entertaining Creature Feature (PS5)

The Quarry is Supermassive’s latest title and was a bit of a surprise one when first announced earlier this year in March. The developer had previously announced that The Devil In Me will be the next installment in The Dark Pictures Anthology. As such, fans of the developer expected that to be released before anything else. 

Similar to the Developer’s previous titles, The Quarry is an interactive horror title. Players will control a group of characters with the objective of keeping them alive. Unlike The Dark Pictures Anthology, however, the cast and story are larger here. While The Quarry succeeds in areas where The Dark Picture Anthology falls short, it’s also a step back gameplay-wise. This The Quarry review will be spoiler-free for those that have yet to visit Hackett’s Quarry.

The Quarry is available now on Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

STORY – WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER

The Quarry follows a group of 9 camp counselors at Hackett’s Quarry. The summer season has ended and these counselors are on their way out. However, due to an “incident,” they remained stuck at the camp for another night. Unaware of the threats that loom in the forest, the group decides to spend their last night together having fun.

For those that have previously played Supermassive’s titles, they’ll feel right at home. The Quarry is broken into chapters with each chapter allowing players to control different characters. They all play the same of course but they don’t all share the same journey. Personally, I found the story to get more interesting as it went along. It doesn’t quite beat Until Dawn but The Quarry is easily Supermassive’s second-best story. What works so well here is the cast of characters and the mystery that they’re trying to solve.

Camp is different when the sun sets

More difficult decisions come along as the story progresses. Based on the player’s decision, the story can change for better or worse. Characters can live or die depending on what choices are made. This can obviously have a drastic change on the story and what players can see. The general structure of the story will be the same but not everyone’s story will be the same. It’s a game that warrants multiple playthroughs. I caught myself wondering what would happen if I had decided to go down a different route than I ultimately did. The decisions are incredibly fun because of how difficult they can sometimes be. I tried my best to keep everyone alive but there were some decisions I had to make that generally stumped me. I didn’t know what to do and my characters sometimes suffered for it.

MEET THE CAMP COUNSELORS

The cast as explained earlier are camp counselors at a camp. Because of this, I thought they’d be a bit…smarter? They’re not though. They either make some of the stupidest decisions or say some of the dumbest things. They’re still young adults of course but still. Not all of them are stupid or annoying, however. The three characters I found myself being drawn to the most are Ryan (Justice Smith), Dylan (Miles Robbins), and Kaitlyn (Brenda Song). I found the three of them to be quite humorous and Kaitlyn was the most responsible when she needed to be.

Some of the characters players will control

As for the others? They weren’t the worse and some of them are also okay. I just found them to sometimes be a bit too whiny. There are love interests that I also felt were awkward and had some really bizarre scenes.

As an example, character 1 likes character 2. Characters 1 and 2 are together in the forest but 2 gets attacked. 1 runs away. 2 then gets rescued by other characters and is on the verge of death. How does character 1 react? They don’t. They’re busy doing something else that does nothing for anyone. Meanwhile, character 2 is potentially saying their last words and asks if character 1 is okay. I just couldn’t help but laugh since character 1 was right next to them and completely ignored them throughout the conversation.

GAMEPLAY – MORE THINKING, LESS INTERACTIVITY

The Quarry is an odd entry for Supermassive. It comes unexpectedly while another installment in The Dark Pictures Anthology draws near. The developer seems to have taken what it has learned from previous games and implements it here. At the same time, the game takes a step back in other areas. Gameplay is one of them.

The campground is nice when you can explore it

When players are not watching cinematics or making decisions, they’ll spend a majority of their time exploring the surrounding areas while looking for clues. It’s the same formula as Supermassive’s other titles. The difference is that this time has been cut much shorter. Cinematics and decision-making seem to take the forefront here. Exploration and interactivity with the world has unfortunately taken a backseat. There is barely much to see here when it comes to exploration. Players will sometimes stumble across a clue every so often that raises a question about the campground or a tarot card that will help with decision making but that’s kind of it.

Letters and such that were present in their previous games that gave insight on characters are basically all gone. Items hidden in the world that might help with situations are more or less gone too. The Quarry just feels incredibly light on exploration. There is an abundance of cinematics here that play where two characters will talk and then seemingly teleport to the area they need to go. There are barely any moments where the player will go and control a character and explore an area while traversing to another. This is just mostly done through cinematics now. It’s a real shame and makes The Quarry feel more like a film than a video game.

The area is big but there aren’t many opportunities to explore it

TAROT CARDS AND CLUES

Although The Quarry cut down on exploration, there are still some collectibles that players might want to try and discover. Tarot cards are one of them. They’re hidden cards in the game that can give players an idea of what decision to make. The difference is that although there might be multiple cards in a chapter, players are only able to pick one of them to view at the end of the chapter. They’ll have to choose carefully and it adds another level of decision-making that I thought was creative.

See Also: The Quarry Tarot Card Locations

Who is she?

Clues are used to replace some of the notes and letters of previous titles. Essentially, a player can discover an object in the world that doesn’t have much information. They typically start with a question and as the story progresses, players can revisit the clue. When they do, they’ll notice that some of the clues are updated with more information due to the information you gathered in the story. It’s a cool idea, but I felt as though it recapped stuff I already learned through the story rather than the information I gathered myself.

THOSE DAMN QTES

Another aspect of these interactive horror games that were hit or miss with some players was the quick-time events (QTEs). For those that disliked them, they’ll be happy to know that they’re much more simplified here. There are only two real buttons that players have to press. The circle button is used for every QTE. The only difference is that you have to press the circle button and pull the thumbstick in a certain direction. It works fine but isn’t nearly as challenging as their previous games. 

Don’t let go until the danger is clear

Apart from QTEs, there are also sections where players might have to hold their breath or shoot a weapon. Shooting is more important here than other events. Sometimes it’s best not to shoot. And sometimes, missing a shot could result in death. As for breath-holding, there was a similar mechanic in House of Ashes. Previously, players had to perfectly time certain button prompts with a heartbeat icon that would appear on the screen. In The Quarry, however, this is again, much more simplified. All that is needed here is to press and hold down the x button until the threat goes away. The main challenge that comes from this title is the various decisions.

GRAPHICS AND AUDIO – THE BEST TO DATE

Supermassive has always done a great job when it comes to the visuals in its horror games. The Quarry is no different and even goes beyond what has been done before. It’s nothing revolutionary, but they really have improved mocap here which helps sell a lot of scenes that previous games wouldn’t have been able to sell.

Character models and mocap have come a long way

Although The Dark Pictures Anthology had great graphics in each installment, character expressions could sometimes break immersion. Character eyes might be looking at a strange angle or their head might be moving too much. That isn’t the case here. Each character looked fantastic and there were moments where if I wasn’t playing the game, I could have been fooled into thinking a character was an actual person. The voice acting also sold me on the character models. There wasn’t a single weak member of the cast. Every single voice actor here brought their A-game and I was endlessly impressed with how natural every scene felt. 

Like The Quarry’s visuals, the audio is also stronger here. I don’t remember music being used nearly as much in previous Supermassive games as it is here. Music is played a lot more in The Quarry and generally works to set the mood. There were one or two instances where the music felt a bit out of place though but nothing too distracting.

PLAYSTATION 5

I played on the PlayStation 5 with HDR enabled and apart from a few blurry backgrounds, The Quarry looked great. That being said, I’m not sure how much more of a jump this game has made from previous entries. The only notable change from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5 was HDR. There doesn’t seem to be an increase in FPS or anything of note for the DualSense controller, yet the price difference between the two consoles is 10 dollars. That puts the PlayStation 5 version of this game at 69.99 USD. Despite being replayable, that’s a steep price for this game and one I don’t think is ultimately worth for a small bump in visual fidelity. 

Have you played The Quarry? Do you agree with this The Quarry review? Let us know in the comments!