Isn’t the holiday season just the worst? All smiles and cheer. People ask if you will put this obscure indie game on your Game of the Year list. LISTEN BILLY, I am trying to pour through my back catalog. Please don’t add another game to my pile of shame. You know, this year overall was so very draining. I deserve to treat myself, and I can’t think of a better way than to take out my frustrations on an unsuspecting video game. I can certainly take a break to ruin someone’s Christmas. You can call me the Grinch for tonight’s festivities. He and I have a lot in common. I too am a fan of discovering a cure for world hunger and telling no one. Who is our Christmas fool tonight? Well, I did part-take in my yearly tradition of gathering some friends and beer and playing through one of Supermassive’s games. This year they decided to splurge on a big boy title: The Quarry. I think we could deliver Supermassive some holiday cheer.
If you are familiar with Supermassive, you know exactly what you are getting into. You are playing a shlocky horror movie where you will be searching for clues in one scene and running from someone in a rubber mask in another. As always controlling characters in a Supermassive game feel like they are skating on ice, constantly sliding across the floor and being unable to stop on a dime. Running from monsters will subjugate you to a series of quick-timed events (QTEs). Yes, Supermassive Games works to make these QTEs less annoying. Yes, they have gotten rid of the criminally awful “hold the controller still” QTE that was in Until Dawn, but they have to know by now that these QTE chase scenes are not working. They are not tense. They are not engaging. They do allow the story to branch off in a choose-your-adventure style, but this cheap trick has lost its magic. Most of the time, I fail them on purpose to see if the game is willing to punish me. In the spirit of Christmas, I will give Supermassive a pass for not evolving the gameplay formula, especially since I would like to focus on The Quarry’s story. However, Supermassive Games, if you put another collectible in a path I can’t reach because I choose to go down the left path instead of the right, you will be getting nothing but coal for Christmas.
Now, to dig into the game’s story; the metaphorical meat and potatoes of this Christmas dinner. Within the deep forest in upstate state New York, another summer at Hackett’s Quarry camp is coming to a closed. As the kids are bused out of the camp, head counselor Chris (played by David Arquette) is rushing to get the remaining counselors out of the camp. Hoping to get another night with one of the counselors, a counselor named Jacob (played by Zach Tinker) sabotages the car that was the remaining ride home. Overly anxious with the sudden turn of events, Chris orders the remaining counselors to stay in the main cabin and lock the doors once it gets dark. What Chris doesn’t factor in, is all the counselors are rowdy teenagers, who immediately throw a party as soon as he leaves. The Friday the 13th inspiration is so obvious that I am surprised Mrs. Voohress hasn’t burst into Supermassive’s office and asked to speak to a manager.
Naturally, teenage high jinx ensue. Truth and dare is played. Someone is dared to kiss someone else. Somebody gets jealous and runs off. Real paint by numbers teenage summer camp drama. So much excitement that the teens don’t seem to notice the full moon looming in the background. Nor do they notice the handful of rednecks with hunting equipment moving onto the campground. Horror, similar to Friday the 13th, ensues.
Before we start digging into spoiler territory, I just wanted to comment on the acting involved in The Quarry. The game boasts a talented cast consisting of David Arquette, Ariel Winter, Brenda Song, Justice Smith, Lance Henriksen, Grace Zabriskie, Ted Rami, and many others; all trying to bring life to their motion-captured characters. Everyone does what they can with the script. Ted Rami, playing Officer Travis Hackett, is able to steal some scenes enraged with the teens who refuse to listen to him. Justice Smith, on the other hand, seems really uninterested in being in The Quarry. I know he is an exceptional actor, but he just acts so detached throughout the game. I can’t tell if he has no direction or trying to act more aloof than he appears, but it really stood out.
Another thing that stands out is how big the lips are on this one character named Emma, played by Halston Sage. Emma genuinely looks like the doctor fell asleep and injected too much botox into her lips. What’s crazy is the actress, Halston Sage, has pretty normal-looking lips. So did the artist in charge of her character’s model just enlarge them for personal pleasure? That is close to some Quantic Dream level of creepiness.
Ok, time to get into the juicy bits. If you don’t want any spoilers then run along to go Christmas caroling or something.
Before we are introduced to the main camp counselor cast, we meet Laura and Max, a couple who are supposed to be camp counselors. Unfortunately, they head to camp early, unleash a monster within the camp’s main hall, and get rescued/captured by Officer Hackett. Later chapters will then flash back to Laura and Max locked up in the town jail. Surprising no one, we learn that Max has been bitten by a werewolf and Officer Hackett was holding them there to prevent the spread of the werewolf disease. Hackett and his redneck family had been working to hunt down the original werewolf, believing if you killed the original werewolf, everyone bitten would return to normal. Knowing all of this Laura, naturally has no trust in Hackett, and works to escape with Max. On the night of a full moon. Of course.
I do want to take a moment to talk about the werewolf design. In The Quarry, when the pale moonlight touches the skin of a werewolf, they instantly explode in a shower of blood. The camera often turns away from the explosion, for dramatic effect, but when it pans back you don’t see a fury of fur and fangs. You see a humanoid creature covered in blood and sightly sharper teeth. This thing looks ridiculous. I get wanting to buck trends and design something different from your typical werewolf, but you have to push further with this design. If the skin is exploding off of them, why not have veiny muscles exposed? Why not have a thicker sharper spine jutting out their back? The skull slowly starting to transform into a wolf snout? This just looks like a ghoul that you would find in the starting zone of a bad MMO.
Back at the camp, all the counselors discover the werewolves and all scatter like roaches. They all try to hide as you have seen in all other generic horror films. Suddenly a gunshot is heard breaking the spell of monotonous horror movie shlock. They race towards the sound to discover someone dead in the pool. Who could it be? One of the counselors? One of the rednecks? Ted Rami? No, it is Kaylee Hackett, Chris’s youngest daughter who was only briefly mentioned in the first chapter. She apparently had been a werewolf and had attacked Laura who was trying to find survivors at the camp. The Quarry tries to treat this scene as a tragic loss. Characters crying and weeping over the loss of this innocent life, but to me, it just felt so out of left field, any investment I had just evaporated. It just comes off as a cheap emotional trick to try to tug at our heartstrings for a character that you can’t even take the time to get us invested in. I was unable to summon any effort to care about any of the characters after this moment.
With Laura filling in the narrative gaps for the rest of the campers, they decide to make for Hackett manor as that is the most likely place where Chris Hackett, who they believe to be the original werewolf, is being held. Naturally, the counselors and the Hacketts collide. Chaos ensues; people are bitten. Some counselors bit each other to pass along the immunity and healing powers the werewolves seem to have. Expect to lose a lot of people in this final act. If you are looking to save everyone you have to insure you got Travis and Laura to trust each other in the earlier acts within the town jail. A plot point so minuscule that I rolled my eyes when I learned that was required to save everyone. It is so very rewarding to have all the characters you worked so hard to save die in the last five minutes because you are pretty sure Laura would hate the guts of someone who basically kidnapped her. Why are these plot points strung together in this order?
I honestly, walked away from The Quarry feeling it was a lesser experience from Supermassive’s previous game, Until Dawn. I know I have hammered that point so many times with the Dark Picture Anthology games, but it is much more obvious this time due to The Quarry striving to be like Until Dawn. The cast is in no way as captivating as the Until Dawn cast. I was shocked when the wendigos showed up in Until Dawn; I rolled my eyes at the werewolves in The Quarry. It was much more obvious that the rednecks were hunting the werewolves, unlike the lone hermit hunting the wendigos in Until Dawn. Yes, The Quarry is certainly a game where you can gather the family and pass the controller around as “Fa Who Doraze” plays in the background, but I just say play Until Dawn if you really wanted an interactive horror movie experience.
I am honestly not even sure what to say to Supermassive at this point. I often said if they slowed down and worked on making something similar to Until Dawn, but look how that has played out. Many of the writers who worked on Until Dawn, didn’t work on the last few Dark Picture games instead working on The Quarry. So I just sitting here completely lost on what they should do. Maybe focus on having one or two likable teenage protagonists. Maybe don’t have random events that come out of left field. Somehow I am not sure these suggestions could even save The Quarry. All I can do is place a lump of coal in their stocking and hope they get the message.
