Quantum Break

I picked up Quantum Break during a sale for cheap, and wow—it was definitely worth the money! This game is so much better than many current-gen titles today. The story is gripping, the time-manipulation mechanics feel fresh, and the live-action episodes add a unique cinematic flair.

It’s sad how games nowadays lack the uniqueness and creativity we saw a decade ago. Quantum Break stands out with its bold mix of gameplay and narrative ambition—something rare in today’s market filled with repetitive open-world grindfests.

If you want an underrated, story-driven experience with solid gameplay, don’t sleep on this. Even years later, it holds up better than most AAA releases today!

Just your average third-person shooter? No, this is a third-person shooter now with time manipulation! Truly an underrated and interesting experience with each episode affected by your choices made throughout the game. Certainly has left its mark on me for sure. Also, can we say that Shawn Ashmore's role as Jack Joyce was a unique take as a badass protagonist??

We add stutters in a game about time stutters so you can experience stutters just as a Jack Joice!
Game optimised so badly, even 5080 can't beat it. Still love the game though. )

I would recommending this game to anyone who likes a good story and gameplay. I'm only a couple of hours in, and i'm crazy hooked.

I had a good time with it. The time powers were really fun to mess around with, and the visuals were impressive. I liked the way the game mixed in live-action episodes—it’s not something you see often, and it actually helped build the story. Some parts of the plot were a bit hard to follow, but overall, it kept me interested. A very good game—and I'm saying that about what I think is Remedy's weakest one, which just shows how much effort they put into all their games.

If you missed this game and are looking for something fun and engaging with a solid story you'll love it, and you'll fall in love with the characters. I think the game starts off a bit to slow personally and I know, you gotta set the stage. But I love diving into game play. If the game play sucks, I wont stick around. I think gamers of all skill levels will appreciate this game, even though this is not what I would consider a hard mode game. The story also takes awhile to get going as much as they try to speed it along and I took several breaks to complete. Around act 3 I get hooked and almost binge the entire thing to completion but everyone's experience may vary.

While this game is a shooter, its decent as far as shooters go. Most of the guns dont have kick back and kick back isnt as crazy as most games. The powers are interesting and come on line pretty quick, leaving the upgrades as the unlock and that portion is cool. They could do a better job of explaining the powers, like time stop + bullets + orange field = boom. The last boss could use a 2nd pass over but is doable. You do have to skip the finally movie quite a bit unless you manage to 1 shot them. It's advised to upgrade your powers before this but not required. You do have to fight guys who are resistant to time powers that slow down time, so time powers that speed you up have an edge, so consider this when upgrading powers. You're welcome.

Probably one of the most cinematic games I've played to date. Emphasis on the cinema part. xD The game has a 4 part live action netflix show built into it. Episodes are slightly changed based on decisions you make at "junctions". Lance Reddick is a stand out among the cast and I got chills watching his performance. Gameplay is simple, almost to a fault. Its a very linear 3rd person shooter with some light platforming tossed in. You have a few basic abilities to add some flavor but most of the game is walking through the set pieces and shooting the guys who get in your way. The story is really where the substance of this game lies and it's got a satisfying sci-fi plot. I personally didn't feel compelled to re-watch any of the episodes with different choices but after beating the game you can go back to a specific spot and watch the other variants if you want. Overall I enjoyed my time with it and if you're considering picking it up for ~20$ or less I'd say give it a try. You should be able to complete the first act + episode in less than the 2 hour refund window here on steam so you've got nothing lose except some time if you don't like it.

People are mixed on it but I personally enjoyed the story.
Making Quantum Break both a game and a show combined into one is a bold choice to be sure but personally I enjoyed it. I'm a narrative kinda guy.

For that reason I wouldn't call this much of a shooter - Sure there's shooter segments and superpowers and what have you, but this game is laser-focused on the narrative side of things. Cutscenes and exposition through collectibles.

Seeing the story unravel in such a well-crafted way is a great experience. As usual Remedy's masterful writing really keeps everything interconnected and it's nice to see story beats come together as the story progresses. The little Alan Wake references really fuel me too.

That is not to say that this game is without problems. The game engine stutters insanely in some sections usually before a cutscene, and the graphics can look a little weird sometimes.
I've heard tell of this game being rushed or crunched and I do kind of see it in some plot holes or some things that they were setting up in the story but never got to explaining so well. It's very obvious Remedy were also pining for a sequel. But, you know... Microsoft.

Still, I'm a fan.

Quantum Break walked so Control could run.

The budget on this one must’ve been something. To produce the game and the TV series at the same time is not a small feat. Overall the game feels like “What if Remedy made a sci-fi blockbuster?”. Of course the narrative in the end is still kinda dark because, well, it’s Remedy. Unfortunately it ends with a cliffhanger and since Microsoft owns the IP, better treat it as a giant The Twilight Zone episode (again, because Remedy). Lots of similarities with Control but the narrative structure cannot be more different.

The game looks amazing and gives The Division 2 vibes — the Northlight engine is kinda similar to Snowdrop as it seems. The level of detail is also similar which is impressive on its own. The gameplay becomes a bit stale because the enemy variety is not there. Lots of optional collectibles make the story much deeper and it felt like the game relies on these walls of convenient emails a bit too much. Same with diaries which are kinda hidden in menus. Overall it felt like the narrative was meant to be at the center and the gameplay came second.

Can recommend to everyone. Enough action and skippable details for action fans and more than enough narrative for narrative fans.

Buggy as hell, but it's a good game with an interesting story.

its great well worth a play bit short and no replay value though but a fun day out, well made.

Story is super amazing! I loved how the pieces of the puzzle all fell into place at the end of the game! The game/TV show combo was super unique! Wish there was a sequel to play!

So far I have made it to Act 3 and this game is by far one of the most enjoyable times I have had. Gameplay is great and the powers are awesome to use. The characters are intriguing and the story benefits from that! My favourite thing however is the live action episodes and seeing how my decisions affect them. If you loved Control (Another amazing game) then this is a perfect addition to your gaming library!

Super fun shooter. Graphics and story easily hold up to today's standards. Only game I've ever played to incorporate a whole mini series into the game to deepen the story from another perspective.

Another beautifully written Remedy game. If you liked the action of Max Payne but also the time-travel sci-fi of shows like Fringe or Dark or the movie Primer, this is a 10/10.

The fact that the game is also interleaved with TWO HOURS worth of shockingly well written and shot TV episodes to accompany the series is absolutely remarkable.

I didn't want to give this a negative review, but after finishing Quantum Break, I felt I had to be honest. The visuals are really good (8/10), and the gameplay is decent (7.5/10), but the story is pretty forgettable (6.5/10). The live-action episodes disrupt the flow of the game, and the streaming servers are so bad that I had to watch them on YouTube. Overall, I'd only recommend it if it's on sale. While the game has a cool concept and some impressive visuals, the execution just didn't hold up in my experience.

pretty fun. a good time travel story, the abilities were fun to use, the cutscenes were pretty cool (tho they were quite long).

Pretty mid, but a fun game overall. Worth getting on sale.

If you're after an interactive movie and into story and narrative then this is the game for you.
At times I felt like I was watching a movie with game play elements in between.
But where you do get to play to the time power were fun to play with interesting puzzles.
Still worth a play if you're up for something different.

Overall, this game is okay, but there are a lot of issues.

Technical and Optimization

For a game that came out almost a decade ago now, visually the game looks amazing, like it could've been released within the past 2-3 years. This was the first time Remedy was using their proprietary engine, Northlight, on a project, and you can tell. The game is VERY unoptimized, but it sorta makes sense with all the tech Remedy crammed in here. For one, this game has a very early version of what now every game includes: upscaling. I think this has to be one of the first games to include some form of upscaling, and I respect Remedy for using new tech and being ahead of its time, but obviously during 2016 the tech was not as advanced or optimized as it is now, leading to this game having a setting where you can lock the game to 30fps. I played on a 3070Ti at medium-high settings, and the game kept fluctuating between 120fps and 60fps with constant frame drops to the point where I just locked it at 60fps. On most parts of the game, I was able to maintain a steady 60fps but, there are some levels that are super unoptimized, like the bridge one. I can only imagine what the performance was on early GTX cards...

Combat

The game has decent combat, gunplay is serviceable, and the time abilities are fun with new ones getting added as the story progresses so you don't get bored. I will admit though, combat did get pretty repetitive and stale near the end of the game, but it's fine. For an early Remedy game that was released after Alan Wake, they were clearly trying to do something new with combat, and they definitely improved on this aspect compared to their past games.

Story

It's Remedy. You are probably playing this game for its story in the first place, and like all of Remedy's other games, it's good. Is it better than Alan Wake or Max Payne? No. But is it terrible? Also no. There are a lot of cool elements in this game, and I enjoyed most of the characters. Jack is a decent protagonist, not too memorable but has some good moments. Paul is a decent antagonist with okay motivations and a couple of standout scenes near the later parts of the game. Beth is one of the better characters with an interesting storyline. William is also pretty good, even if he is barely in the game. I would say the one character I liked the most was definitely Lance Reddick's character (Rest in Peace). He steals the show here with many great moments and the clues of him being chronon enabled/being a shifter are nicely done, and I wished they explored more on this idea of a being that can exist in many different dimensions at once (I guess Remedy did do this 7 years later in Alan Wake 2 with Mr. Door, which is just Mr. Hatch but reworked because Remedy didn't get the rights to Quantum Break and sadly Lance passed away) . I love time travel stories, so I was hoping this game would focus more on that, but the stuff they did focus on with the chronon and closed loops are cool concepts that I enjoyed. The rest of the story... it's fine, it's got some decent time stuff mixed in with okay to great characters and some good writing here and there. I did like the ending and it makes sense that Jack is becoming similar to Paul (in the sense of his powers and sickness), but it all kind of feels pointless since it's just a setup to a sequel that never happened. I probably would've liked the sequel to this game more since it seemed like it was going to focus on Mr. Hatch.

The Gimmick

This game's gimmick is that it's a game but also a TV show, which is kind of cool because Remedy has been doing live-action stuff for their games since Max Payne, and it's clear they have a love for it. Is it executed perfectly in this game? No. But it does help expand the story and some minor characters in ways that would've been boring if they had just been gameplay segments. Also, your choices in the game affecting the episodes is a nice touch and does fit well with the game.

Final Thoughts

The game kind of just feels like sequel bait, but to be honest, all of Remedy's games sort of are. I really like what Remedy is doing with the whole Remedy Connected Universe, but at the same time, it also means that literally every single one of their games is just sequel bait, and you just have to wait to see if that specific franchise gets a sequel or if another Remedy game comes out that is in some someway connected or builds upon the previous (You can tell Control builds upon Quantum Break for example). The ending for Quantum Break is 100% setting up a Quantum Break 2, but Remedy didn't get the rights to make a sequel, and they moved on to Control, which was honestly for the best. Overall, the game is okay. It has its moments but it's definitely one of Remedy's weakest games.

Great narrative, played this back on release in 2016 on Xbox still holds up today. I always liked the Remedy shooters, Max Payne, Control, Alan Wake. This particular game does not get the notoriety of them other titles but in my opinion it should. I really enjoy the built in TV show that plays out like something from the days of "24". Top production values make this game an overall hit for me. Oh btw this really makes me appreciate Lance Reddick even more since his unfortunate passing, he was really good in this game! Recommended.

Very good game with great story and immersive worldbuilding and well developed characters. The production value is also above and beyond. The game was already good, they did not have to create this mini series of live action events that you watch as the story progresses but they did it nevertheless and it adds so much to the whole experience.
The gunplay is very good and the time powers make you feel extraordinary.

The best story in remedys stellar games. I wish they would make a tv show of this game.

such a underrated game, i love this. 2016 and they already made this kind of game, by far the best time stop game.

it drags on and on and on! I just wanted it to end. It definitely overstays it's welcome.i give is a 2/5

This is a really rough game in 2025 with a range of issues.

I picked this up a while back and tried giving it a play on the Steamdeck. With the mixture of locked 30FPS pre-rendered gameplay cut-scenes, the in-game live rendered cut-scenes at 60FPS and the actual gameplay running anywhere from 50-60 FPS, it's a very rough experience.

On low / medium settings with the default upscaling (which is a legacy upscaler) you're able to get 60FPS but it never feels smooth in movement (even with vsync disabled and a 60FPS limit put on the deck). The game itself looks very poor in movement, it constantly wobbles, shimmers and shakes and it's incredibly distracting. I get it's a 2016 game but it looks and feels so much worse than Control, a similar game from a similar time period.

The game is part live action so after each major segment you'll get a video. No that video isn't stored locally, it's on some far away server in Kazakhstan streaming to you at 720p at the lowest bitrate possible (which will still somehow stutter and pause mid stream). I ended up just skipping these and watching them on YouTube. I'm amazed they just didn't give you an option to download these considering that's exactly what the Xbox version had.

I expected a decent story and game from Remedy since I enjoyed Control, but this one was a huge miss for me, I didn't enjoy the convoluted storyline at all and it's very shallow set of decisions.

I'm so glad I picked this one up on sale years ago and didn't pay full price for it.

Just finished the game on Steamdeck and I gotta say it ran amazingly at medium settings. Never dipped below 30 and was very smooth, though the fans were going crazy.

Story was pretty interesting, and even the live action episodes were pretty cool, but I didn’t really see a need for them since they already had cutscenes, it didn’t really add much for me.

The gameplay is pretty sick, time powers are amazing to use, guns are pretty standard but it feels great to use both in tandem to get rid of enemies.

Overall it was a great game, a little on the short side so I would recommend getting it on sale like I did, but I’m glad I played it. Remedy always does a pretty great job.

Game with an interesting plot. Things about past events and future consequences of the events. You have multiple options to pick but it doesn't impact the story that much. Although you get little hidden details here and there with each decisions.

Reading the documents, images, hearing the radio and character logs were very interesting. Everything gave an idea of what was going on in the game. How there were factions within factions. Also, there are tributes to Alan Wake. I liked that too.

The game has great visuals for its time. The details to the environment and special effects during fights were awesome. Just walking around the university and the island was beautiful. Even the inner environments were good looking.

I didn't find the music of the game that much to my liking. I liked 2 songs. Not that much good music. Although the mid episodes helped me get immersed in the story.

The game mechanics were fun. The guns and ammunition were basic but the time related powers were fun to play with. Although it would be more fun if there were more weapon choices or throwables like time grenade or something. That would be fun.

All over, it was a fun experience. I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes a linear single player game. Its a bit short for a game enthusiast but its enough for a casual gamer.

An absolute fantastic game!! One of the few games with a story that completely pulled me in from start to finish. With the game being older, there are some glitches (elites spinning uncontrollably) and the likes, but that is to be expected with no more patches coming out. Due to the glitches though, I give this game a 9/10.

I already played it on Xbox One when it came out. I liked it a lot. I recently tried to play it via the PC game pass but it has some graphical issues and the episodic videos wouldn’t play in the Microsoft Store version. Users on reddit suggested that both these issues are not present on the Steam version. So here I am.

Like all Remedy games, fantastic storytelling, fascinating world building, and great characters!

Don't think too hard to question too much and you will have a good time. Even if it does drag on a bit at times.

It was an interesting and different game. It's worth trying once.

This game has cinematic cutscenes/episodes that are streamed between chapters and the servers/CDN they are hosted on is rubbish causing them to constantly buffer. On XBox they can be downloaded in an episode pack "Quantum Break Episode Pack" allowing the cutscenes to be played offline, over slow internet or in locations/countries that the servers/CDN simply fail to serve. In Australia these videos can't stream without buffering even on an uncontested 1gbps connection. There are also many reports of the video hosting going down completely, preventing the episodes playing at all.

This is completely unacceptable as the product simply cannot work correctly for many customers. For many customers this issues cannot be fixed and they have to try to watch the cutscenes on YouTube, however this can be tricky as they are dependant on various choices and discoveries made during gameplay. This will be the first game I have ever requested a refund on.

one of the coolest game i ever played great story line great actors and great game . man i love this game so much .

Is it possible to make a great TV series and a game at the same time ?
Well, Quantum Break says fuck yeah!
Amazing graphics, a great story, wonderful gameplay with different time skills, modeling, programming, level design, lightning everything is almost immaculate.
Now time for the bad things:
1 - After all that choices we made as Paul Serena, why didn't it feel like we were making a difference ?
2 - Upgrade menu could have been better,
3 - Optimization at one point,
4 - It always felt like, i was fighting at same difficulty and short.
I can't really think of anything else for the moment.

Nearly 9 years later and this game is still awesome. Undeniably a Remedy game with both their iconic fight mechanic and the combination of live action and in game cut scenes, make this a great title to come back to every few years. The story has me hooked up each time I replay and the different combination of ways the story can play out gives you a good illusion of being in control of the narrative between the start and finish.

Definitely can recommend this game, if you are fan of the devs looking for more- this is a must play!

Great game, great story. Love you Remedy.

wtf with the ending tho?

Very impressive game from remedy studio. there is some Tasty bug's But it's worth the Time 🌹

I love playing Remedy games, but the check points are awfully placed on this one, It makes playing this game incredibly frustrating, It is not fun at all, give this one a miss. Buy Control instead, that is a far better gaming experience. And Remedy, ditch the check points and allow the player to save!

Content buffering on the episodes, Therefore a good review from me is also buffering.

I don't suggest buying this game unless we can download the live action scenes. Otherwise the whole game gets stuck with content buffering errors.

it's feels like more a movie than a game, but it's very good one

S tier story.
The ending was a cliffhanger hinting a potential sequel but it probably got cancelled.
The visuals are pretty stunning for a 8.5 year old game. If the visuals are blurry, kindly turn off upscaling and restart the game. The way the game managed to visually represent broken time through distortions and particle effects was quite creative. To be honest, Remedy Games are known for this kinda stuff so it shouldn't be a surprise.
The pacing is kinda bad in this game, there is a lot of stuff to read and listen to which can break the immersion sometimes.
The gunplay is good in my opinion, the powers are pretty fun to use but there is a lack of enemy variety which makes it repetitive after a certain point.
A lot of people complained about the live shows but it wasn't that bad in my opinion. The actors did a decent job.
100% the game is kinda easy and so is obtaining all the achievements. To be honest, it doesn't matter to me for a story rich genre game.

Review: I would consider this game a interactive series rather than an actual game. If you are not a fan of cinematic and story driven games, close this store page immediately and keep scrolling.
The game has 4 "episodes", one after every major choice the player - these are pretty long if you don't enjoy these type of "interruptions" so to speak. After each, you have a few hours of game play where you interact with objects, read emails and watch videos, listen to audio clips, or fight against the bad guys.

The combat itself starts off simple, the powers are pretty OP, if you play "Normal" this game is a breeze UNTIL the last chapter of the game where you face the final boss - THIS FIGHT ... This fight almost made me give up the game quite honestly, I initially played the game on "HARD" but it was impossible to succeed in the battle, every time I thought I was there I would get one shotted by one of the enemies, forcing me to drop the difficulty to "NORMAL" and missing out on the platinum achievement. This sucks as a completionist, but all the hours you see here is me trying to get the final battle win on hard mode.

You can replay the game and choose the chapters you want to restart, so, if you don't care much about story and just want achievements for the other choices, this makes it easy.
The story itself seems pretty "locked in" - when you replay the game the opposite way it's easy to notice. There are some obvious changes such as the second NPC that joins you, the ending scene dialogue, some of the notes/videos you find. But overall, there's just one ending, and I wouldn't consider this a real "choice matter" game since they all lead you to a similar plot line.

All in all, this is a nice experience, the ending battle is beyond frustrating but the story was interesting and the visuals were captivating, the game is quite demanding so sometimes there are drops in performance but nothing crazy. I would give it a 6.5/10, and a good experience for those who want an overall relaxing and cinematic driven game, but I'm a tough critic.


~ GAMEPLAY ~
🔲 Boring
🔲 Rock Paper Scissors
✅ Fun
🔲 Hmm..........
🔲 Entertaining
🔲 Ace
🔲 Godlike


~ DIFFICULTY ~
🔲 My grandma could play it
🔲 Easy
✅ Normal
🔲 Hard
🔲 A challenge to be reckoned


~ GRAPHICS ~
🔲 MS Paint
🔲 Bad
🔲 Meh
🔲 Normal
✅ Very Good
🔲 An original artistic direction
🔲 Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece


~ STORY ~
🔲 This game has no story
🔲 Some lore
🔲 It's there for people who want it
✅ Well written
🔲 Leading to more in-depth researches/thoughts
🔲 A model to get inspired by


~ LENGTH ~
🔲 0 (No story)
🔲 Short
✅ Average
🔲 Long
🔲 To infinity and beyond


~ MUSIC ~
🔲 Just filling noises/No music
🔲 Trivial and uneventful
✅ Good and/or fitting the game's artistic dispositions
🔲 Memorable
🔲 Transcending whispers of a forgotten world


~ INTEREST ~
🔲 I would rather watch paint dry
🔲 Hard to enjoy
🔲 Repetitive and/or uninspired
✅ A good moment
🔲 Sticking out of the pack
🔲 You will remember it long after


~ REPLAYABILITY ~
🔲 A one-time experience
🔲 Only for achievements
🔲 If you wait a few months/years (or with mods)
✅ Definitely
🔲 Infinitely replayable (or almost)

This game is 70gbs and most of that is uncompressed video files of like a CW show. #SamLakeIsGOAT

This product is a symbiosis of a series, interactive storytelling and a game that allows you to unravel an interesting story like a ball of wool woven by time and sequence of actions.

Yes, there are some disadvantages of the game (for example, in some places you can't skip the same moments), but still they are leveled by the final quality of what came out in the end, as well as the narrative itself.

So, finally played this game to completion. Awesome. The episodes being interwoven with the different acts in the game is very cool. Graphics are great, combat great. Wish you had a sprint option in movement but not a deal breaker. Story is very good, intricate & detailed as well as some surprises I didn't see coming. If a 2nd game was released I'd play it too. Does have frame drops when transitioning from cut scenes to game play but overall game is solid. I don't like the fact that ultrawide support is sub-optimal. I could only go with my monitor native of 3440x1440 instead of any of my custom resolutions that are larger.

A very long shooter. Loved the interactive story and all the choices. If you are not used to shooting games then this won't be for you but, if you push past that side of it the story made it all worth it. I would definitely recommend

remedy never fails when comes to third person shooter, and this time is not differente. excelent gunplay, the time perks are very enjoyable. the story of the game is cool and boring at the same time, because its well scrypted and acted but the live action show is little bit silly. i would recommend this game easily, worth totally, and you can always skip the live action if its bores you.

I think the game is good. It's definitely for more of more for people who like a long... LONG... story driven game. I'm not a fan of playing a game with choices just to have the choice acted out in a live action skit that takes 15 minuets. I don't know how many there are because after the first one I lost interest. It killed my immersion.