• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Quantum Break |OT| We'll Be Right Back After This Commercial Break

Chitown B

Member
The carbine rifle's the best for taking out snipers I found. That or rushing them and punching them, that's fun too :p




Absolutely amazing, thanks :p

Yeah, Carbine is your only choice, and you have to be lucky enough to find one. Plus they are still two shot kills and no scope.
 

Xellos

Member
It's obvious that a ton of effort went into making this game. The graphics are gorgeous, and combining the in-game story with the TV stuff had to be a massive undertaking. I just wish the gameplay had been given more priority. I felt like QB wanted to be a story driven experience much more than a third person shooter (or even a game, really). The powers and guns looked cool, but there wasn't much enemy variety, and it got repetitive by the end.
The fight with Serene was super lame. Guy just has minions fight you while he hangs back and uses an area-of-effect attack. He has super time powers, can see the future, and this is the best boss battle Remedy could come up with. Underwhelming to say the least. Time shifters were also a terrible tease, because it makes you think that there will be another enemy type, but they never show up during gameplay.
Use of the time powers outside of shooting was limited to 'slow down/rewind time enough to temporarily open a door/make a bridge.' Also, hunting for chronon points was a lame way to pad out the walking sections. I would rather have Jack's powers upgrade based on in-game use.
 

shandy706

Member
Jesus Christ this last boss fight is retroactively destroying all the fun I had with the game. I mean, fuck.

And the fucking load times. Especially when your name in real life is
Will and you have to hear "Forget Will, Jack!" 3000 fucking times because you die randomly from shit you don't see.

The final fight isn't bad once you figure it out.

Just kill the first wave quickly. If you have trouble go to the back of the room and let them come to you. Just speed run out of the red blasts when Serene puts them near you. The enemies will come to you.

When Serene goes to top middle platform and sets off the first blast, just go to the rooms/hallway on the left (if your facing the front from the back). Should be safe.

Shoot Serene.

With the second wave, sit at the back and dodge the red blasts again. Let the enemies come to you, don't push forward. The final gattling/heavy gun guy can be dealt with by a couple/few Time Blasts (hold down RB). Don't aim straight at him, hit the ground next to him.

Ok, took me a second to realize Serene sets off blasts one at a time around the room this time. The camera should show where each blast is starting. Just use the running time moves (LB/hold LB) to move to the opposite sides of the room. It's easy once you realise that. The blasts only cover about 2/3rds of the room from where they start.

After a few blasts Serene will falter again and you can end the fight shooting him.

Haha, I died only 7 times through act 5. The boss fight had me die quite a few times before I realized
the second wave blasts happen around the whole area.


People complained about the final battle, but I'm glad it's an actual challenge instead of a stupid QuickTime event or cakewalk.
 
The final fight isn't bad once you figure it out.

Just kill the first wave quickly. If you have trouble go to the back of the room and let them come to you. Just speed run out of the red blasts when Serene puts them near you. The enemies will come to you.

When Serene goes to top middle platform and sets off the first blast, just go to the rooms/hallway on the left (if your facing the front from the back). Should be safe.

Shoot Serene.

With the second wave, sit at the back and dodge the red blasts again. Let the enemies come to you, don't push forward. The final gattling/heavy gun guy can be dealt with by a couple/few Time Blasts (hold down RB). Don't aim straight at him, hit the ground next to him.

Ok, took me a second to realize Serene sets off blasts one at a time around the room this time. The camera should show where each blast is starting. Just use the running time moves (LB/hold LB) to move to the opposite sides of the room. It's easy once you realise that. The blasts only cover about 2/3rds of the room from where they start.

After a few blasts Serene will falter again and you can end the fight shooting him.

Haha, I died only 7 times through act 5. The boss fight had me die quite a few times before I realized
the second wave blasts happen around the whole area.

People complained about the final battle, but I'm glad it's an actual challenge instead of a stupid QuickTime event or cakewalk.

Thanks. I finally beat it after about 45 mins of trying (on hard). Fell into a rhythm and it wasn't too bad I guess. Just takes a while to figure out.
 

Chitown B

Member
on the last boss fight on hard.

I get down to the last couple guys in the second round and it seems the entire room is filled with red spots. I'll toss a time stop at the shotty guys and of course they'll toss their immunity bubble while I start shooting them. DEAD.

They really should fix the last boss fight. It's not fun and it ruins the game.
 
on the last boss fight on hard.

I get down to the last couple guys in the second round and it seems the entire room is filled with red spots. I'll toss a time stop at the shotty guys and of course they'll toss their immunity bubble while I start shooting them. DEAD.

They really should fix the last boss fight. It's not fun and it ruins the game.

I just sat back with the Carbine and popped the big guy from the other side of the room. Took him down after about 9-10 shots.
 

Big_Al

Unconfirmed Member
on the last boss fight on hard.

I get down to the last couple guys in the second round and it seems the entire room is filled with red spots. I'll toss a time stop at the shotty guys and of course they'll toss their immunity bubble while I start shooting them. DEAD.

They really should fix the last boss fight. It's not fun and it ruins the game.


The best way in the boss fight is

I tended to rush/melee a lot of the weaker enemys. None of the smaller ones are really much trouble, the biggest nuisance is that one hit kill from Serene and the bigger enemys. For the bigger enemies I found rushing behind them and shooting their backpacks was always the best way and quite quick and effective. You'll get the hang of it, it's really not bad when you get it down pat
 

bill.cosby

Neo Member
Man, this game was great! I guess I shouldn't be too surprised cuz Remedy, but this is right up there with Alan Wake for me.

Also, if anyone at Remedy is listening - if you make DLC for this, please please please make it a playable version of Time Knife. That would make my year :)
 

SlickVic

Member
One thing that's poorly handled in this game is cutscene loading. The game graciously offers you the option to skip cutscenes, only to boot you out to a loading screen while it finishes loading. It almost feels like someone figured out a loophole around some arbitrary requirement of 'no unskippable cutscenes' without actually solving the problem.

As I'm not someone who skips cutscenes during my first playthrough, this gets annoying when you die during a combat encounter, the game loads, boots you up to the cutscene right before the fight, and you end up either having to watch the cutscene again or "skip" it and spend that time watching a loading screen instead. This is particularly bad in the final encounter of the game where one hit kills take you back out to repeat the process for the umpteenth time.

Considering a lot of games nowadays are pretty smart about handling the above situation by tapping a button to skip the cutscene and immediately getting you back into the gameplay, Quantum Break's approach to this feels sluggish and dated.
 
One thing that's poorly handled in this game is cutscene loading. The game graciously offers you the option to skip cutscenes, only to boot you out to a loading screen while it finishes loading. It almost feels like someone figured out a loophole around some arbitrary requirement of 'no unskippable cutscenes' without actually solving the problem.

As I'm not someone who skips cutscenes during my first playthrough, this gets annoying when you die during a combat encounter, the game loads, boots you up to the cutscene right before the fight, and you end up either having to watch the cutscene again or "skip" it and spend that time watching a loading screen instead. This is particularly bad in the final encounter of the game where one hit kills take you back out to repeat the process for the umpteenth time.

Considering a lot of games nowadays are pretty smart about handling the above situation by tapping a button to skip the cutscene and immediately getting you back into the gameplay, Quantum Break's approach to this feels sluggish and dated.

Game uses the cutscenes to load, its pretty common. I'm not sure what they're supposed to do in that case if it needs to load the data in... they didn't put a loading screen on there for fun.

Obviously it would be preferable if they could eliminate the loading but clearly the game needs it so that limits the options, hopefully if they get to go again they can work on that is about the best we can hope for.
 

aravuus

Member
Act 1 done, episode 1 seen and it's pretty much what I expected it to be: boring gameplay, amazing everything else. Exactly like Alan Wake. When it comes to gimmicks, I definitely enjoy QB's more (actually hated the light torch stuff AW had), but goddamn the game is still sluggish. Can't get used to it. Moving is sluggish, aiming is sluggish. I don't think I've played a 30fps shooter in a while, so maybe they just are like this most of the time, but there's definitely some pretty harsh input lag going on. I can't remember AW being bad about this at all.

But, again, it's actually exactly what I expected lol. I'm in it for the story.

e: also episode 1 of the show was much much better than I was expecting! The incredibly minor quantum ripple variations made me laugh though, especially the goat statue thing, buuuut I guess I shouldn't have expected much anyway
 

SlickVic

Member
Game uses the cutscenes to load, its pretty common. I'm not sure what they're supposed to do in that case if it needs to load the data in... they didn't put a loading screen on there for fun.

Obviously it would be preferable if they could eliminate the loading but clearly the game needs it so that limits the options, hopefully if they get to go again they can work on that is about the best we can hope for.

I think you misunderstood my point. The problem isn't the game needing to load after a game over. Almost every game needs to do that. The problem is after that load you're often forced to rewatch a cutscene or skip it and wait for a second loading screen to actually get back into the combat. That is not typical for games nowadays. They either load you right back into the gameplay or the cutscene can be skipped immediately to get back into the gameplay (as the level had already been loaded during that prior load screen). It begs the question what the game is actually doing during that first reload after a game over. Is it loading a cutscene I'm about to skip? That would be a wasted effort.
 

TheKeyPit

Banned
JSoM4XL.gif
 
Act 1 done, episode 1 seen and it's pretty much what I expected it to be: boring gameplay, amazing everything else. Exactly like Alan Wake. When it comes to gimmicks, I definitely enjoy QB's more (actually hated the light torch stuff AW had), but goddamn the game is still sluggish. Can't get used to it. Moving is sluggish, aiming is sluggish. I don't think I've played a 30fps shooter in a while, so maybe they just are like this most of the time, but there's definitely some pretty harsh input lag going on. I can't remember AW being bad about this at all.

But, again, it's actually exactly what I expected lol. I'm in it for the story.

e: also episode 1 of the show was much much better than I was expecting! The incredibly minor quantum ripple variations made me laugh though, especially the goat statue thing, buuuut I guess I shouldn't have expected much anyway

TV show gets much better after episode 1 too. Also you don't have the full powers in Act 1 I don't think? As you collect stuff and upgrade, learn new strategies they get good, at first they don't really seem that useful, see how you feel after Act 4...

Also you get a new power in Act 3 as well so it takes a while to get it all.

I think you misunderstood my point. The problem isn't the game needing to load after a game over. Almost every game needs to do that. The problem is after that load you're often forced to rewatch a cutscene or skip it and wait for a second loading screen to actually get back into the combat. That is not typical for games nowadays. They either load you right back into the gameplay or the cutscene can be skipped immediately to get back into the gameplay (as the level had already been loaded during that prior load screen). It begs the question what the game is actually doing during that first reload after a game over. Is it loading a cutscene I'm about to skip? That would be a wasted effort.

Fair enough. Perhaps it is just poor checkpointing, which is on my list of fairly unforgivable faults in games (along with shitty boss battles, unfortunately QB has both at the end especially)), seems like they have made some bad choices for where to put them and I get your point.

Just finished act 1. Wtf is up with the frame rate on the live action video? It's stuttery and all over the place. Is it a 50/60hz thing?

Are you streaming the videos? Could be that...
 

Alienous

Member
The thing with the final boss is that it's basically a quiz of the gameplay loop. Not a well designed one, but it isn't an unfathomable challenge.

By that point in the game
you should have strategies for defeating each of the enemy types in the game, like rushing the bigger guys, pumping them full of bullets, time-shielding and dashing away. There's a harder section earlier in the game, where they throw all the variations into a single room (including snipers), except you are able to cheese that section by sticking to cover. All the final boss comes down to is "defeat these enemies, and don't stop moving". I can see how you might be fucked if you got used to playing it as a cover shooter, though
.
 
You have people saying only two powers, time dash and time stop, are useful? Madness. Time Shield is essential if you know how to use it and aren't afraid to use it. It's an absolute lifesaver, same for time rush.
 

Alienous

Member
You have people saying only two powers, time dash and time stop, are useful? Madness. Time Shield is essential if you know how to use it and aren't afraid to use it. It's an absolute lifesaver, same for time rush.

Time Shield is game breakingly powerful.

Defense from damage and health regeneration? The B button is the win button.
 

ElRenoRaven

Member
You have people saying only two powers, time dash and time stop, are useful? Madness. Time Shield is essential if you know how to use it and aren't afraid to use it. It's an absolute lifesaver, same for time rush.

Yea those people are nuts. All the abilities are useful as hell. They all balance so well and if used right then it makes for fun hectic gameplay.
 
Still haven't cracked open my copy yet (incentive to finish up some of the hardware projects I'm working on) but I was wondering if anyone picked up the "The Secret History of Time Travel" book? I was a big fan of the making of book that was published for Alan Wake and was wondering if this release was in that same vein or just a guide with some bonus content at the end?
 

SlickVic

Member
For the final boss, how do you figure out
the safe place to hide from Paul's megaton explosion
?
I don't always see where the explosion starts since it happens right as soon as I'm busy finishing enemies, but hugging the back wall of the gym is very hit or miss in terms of working.
Getting a bit frustrating as I can figure out the rest of the encounter barring a few cheap deaths here and there, but this part is starting to feel like a crapshoot.

Edit: Ok, I figured it out thanks to this video. (Final boss strategy spoilers)
Basically you always want to finish the wave either in front or back of the pool. When he charges his explosion just run to the opposite side. So at the end of the last wave I was at the back of the pool, so basically it went like this. Bomb 1 --> time rush to front of pool --> Bomb 2 --> time rush to back of pool ---> Bomb 3 --> time rush back to front of pool --> shields break then fire shots to finish him up. Initially this seemed counter intuitive as it felt like I would often have to run right through the bomb to get to the other side, but it appears it doesn't actually one hit kill you until he triggers a "detonation", at which point you should be at the other side of the pool. Also I didn't have enough time rush to fully get me through to the wall of the other side especially with his 3 bombs is succession, but apparently I had just enough to get me out of the danger zone. I imagine this is even more challenging if you didn't fully upgrade time rush, so I'm glad I did that.
 

Trup1aya

Member
For the final boss, how do you figure out
the safe place to hide from Paul's megaton explosion
?
I don't always see where the explosion starts since it happens right as soon as I'm busy finishing enemies, but hugging the back wall of the gym is very hit or miss in terms of working.
Getting a bit frustrating as I can figure out the rest of the encounter barring a few cheap deaths here and there, but this part is starting to feel like a crapshoot.

I just hugged the back of the gym, occasionally running into the back room if neccisary.

Use time rush and time dodge to get away from the thing, if neccisary.
 
Time Shield is game breakingly powerful.

Defense from damage and health regeneration? The B button is the win button.

There are sections particularly in Act 4 where there are snipers etc where its useful but you have to use other stuff too. Snipers can knock you down easily, you only get two bubbles at a time iirc? Before it recharges... its certainly powerful but the limits on it stop it being B to win as some enemies can break them too
 
Wow that eas awesome. Just beat it!

he tells beth ill come back for you. Wtf is this im confused! Ao hes an monarch to have them build it for him? So many questions. I love this game lol
 

ViciousDS

Banned
Will I have to collect everything again If I start a new game?

Use the timeline and select chapter 1 act 1 from there, you will keep everything on your playthrough


clicking new game will delete everything.....but there is no point in ever using that option.....it should be removed much like the quit was on the windows version XD
 

Alienous

Member
There are sections particularly in Act 4 where there are snipers etc where its useful but you have to use other stuff too. Snipers can knock you down easily, you only get two bubbles at a time iirc? Before it recharges... its certainly powerful but the limits on it stop it being B to win as some enemies can break them too

A few of the powers have use offensively and defensively, and the Time Shield can be used to push close enemies away from you, stop incoming bullets, and regenerate your health rapidly while you stay in the bubble, and it regenerates quickly. So its defensive capabiltiies are really good.

I maybe upgraded two abilities in my entire first-run hard playthough, and I think one of them might have been the shield, but the Time Shield was shockingly powerful when I started to give it the time of day, It makes it extremely hard to die. Rush up to enemies, shoot them, take damage, time shield, stay in the bubble until you regenerate your health, dash/sprint away. It makes a lot of the encounters, that were meant to be tougher, trivial. The other abilities are good, but the Time Shield makes combat easy.
 

aravuus

Member
Goddamn, going by some of his email stuff, Charlie is a pretty bitter dude

Also the first half of the screenplay was amazing
 
Use the timeline and select chapter 1 act 1 from there, you will keep everything on your playthrough


clicking new game will delete everything.....but there is no point in ever using that option.....it should be removed much like the quit was on the windows version XD

Thank you. I was going to start a new game but I'm glad that I waited.
 
Been playing through this the past few days. Almost done act 4. The game is good for sure, and the story is well done. I expected the "show" to be worse than it actually is, but I find it to be okay, and any scenes with the bigger actors seem to be automatically better.

If there was one thing that bothers methat really takes me out of the game, and can be viewed as a legit negative, it's the loading. I'm fine with long loading times and things like that in most games. But what's happening in this game is really bothering me. I'm not talking about overall loading times, I'm talking about with how they are handled in general along with checkpoints for certain encounters.

Abrupt cuts to the white act x part y splash screen while dialogue is still going on, or heck a dialogue is said 5 seconds after the screen came up. The structure of the loading screens and cuts.

For instance, I could just be walking along, or just finished the act, cut to an abrupt white splash screen to load, now cutscene, cut back to the white splash screen and load some more, maybe even longer than the load before the cutscene. It'd be understandable if I had skipped the cutscene and it loads again, but they really should've timed it so that people would only see one load if the cutscene is not skipped. It really messed with presentation (which is a huge aspect of this game)

Then there's the checkpoint thing if you die in an encounter. So far the 3 spots where I have died the most this is basically what happens. Die, wait a while for it to reload, you're back at a little traversal or navigation section before the encounter took place, get through this part, cutscene happens (either watch the whole thing or skip it, either way you'll be waiting as it'll need to load if you decide to skip), finally got back to doing the encounter. Die again because majority of your time was spent getting back to the encounter rather than in the actual encounter.

In the case of the 2nd encounter,
the first time you face a juggernaut
, there are cases where you can be instantly killed as soon as you get control, so it's even more frustrating. Honestly this whole loading/checkpoint aspect of the game is definitely going to be something that prevents me from coming back to the game on a higher difficulty later (currently playing on normal).

Had they designed the checkpoints/reloads by getting you right back into the encounter, or loading you directly into the cutscene right before the encounter, it'd be a different story.

I know I wrote a lot regarding basically just one aspect, but it's really bothering me and making my experience less enjoyable of what is otherwise a terrific title.
That's weird, I didn't had any of the loading issues you described.

Unless you mean the fights that when you lose you get to before the cutscene that plays before the fight, and if you skip it you get a loading screen? That happened with me in the final battle only, but I assume it would be the same for all dramatic battles that have a cutscene before?
 
Act 4 spoilers.

So you have a book that you received from your older self when you were a kid. You grow up, travel back through time, and meet your young self, and have to write the book to give to her. The point won't be lost, clearly they're dealing with heavy stuff, but would the actual writing of the book start to have a "telephone" effect? Each version drifting farther and farther away from the original?

I had been having a good time with the game but I'm glad it's finally starting to get into some of this crazier shit.

Off topic, I know, but I just wrapped up Alan Wake. Oh my god it's incredible

Just the main game, or the DLC episodes as well?
 
I love the game but the final boss is such shit.

It breaks the two rules I have for games which piss me off the most: Poor checkpoints, cheap and annoying bosses. No matter where you go on hard it just works to screw you over, auto-locks the camera to focus on the bomb which then means I can't see where I'm running too, manages to put insta-kill bombs right at your feet no matter where you are, no checkpoint between rounds... ugh. Please patch this Remedy, I can live with the checkpoint issue, the other stuff is just unnecessary and does nothing to help the game.
 

SlickVic

Member
Finally finished this up today and messed around briefly with the junction choices afterwards. Wound up being 1 achievement short of the full 1000/1000 (played on normal instead of hard). Just wanted to share some of my thoughts on the game, even though this is probably a bit long-winded.

Similar to Alan Wake, I enjoyed the story a lot more than the gameplay. To Quantum Break's credit, I do think the gameplay has a lot more going for it than Wake's and I do like the variety in time powers. I felt I was mostly successful in being able to break out of the initial temptations of trying to play the game as a standard cover shooter, and rather play to the strengths of the game's combat. At the same time, I never quite felt I was able to combo moves seamlessly from one to the next as much as I hoped I would. Playing through the game, I wondered whether I would enjoy the combat more if they had gotten rid of the guns and made it purely about power-based attacks. Then again, perhaps my brain just had a hard time balancing shooting and time powers to pull off super slick combat encounters.

As for the story, I really liked Quantum's Break's spin on the time travel tale with the notion of
we can go back in time but we're not actually able to change the past
, and that doesn't become 100% clear until the late stages of the game. Time travel stories obviously can get very messy and convoluted if the writers don't put much effort into filling in the plot holes, but to me at least, it felt Remedy did a very good job at not only making the whole thing come together, but also having it make sense.

The 4 live action episodes interspersed in the game felt pretty neat. I debated in my mind how essential they actually felt to the story, but I really liked the idea of seeing what was going on in the world from the POV of other characters. I think one of the challenges in storytelling in video games is not every story beat necessarily lends itself to having good gameplay moments. And being able to tell parts of this story without this constraint is kind of cool. I also liked how each Episode fit into a very specific part of the game, and each one was well integrated into what happened before in the game as well as helping to inform what came after. I think this format worked a lot better than say releasing all the episodes on Netflix and trying to piece out how it fit into the game on your own.

I have my doubts this format will catch on with other games, but I'm glad to see Remedy experiment with this.

As far as the live action bits go, there's probably another discussion on the impact of choice and how that affects the narrative, but truthfully outside messing around a bit with the junction points, I only played through the game with one set of choices (which I was pretty happy with), so I'm not particularly sure how it all changes with different choices at the junction points.

The collectibles are also pretty crucial to filling in a lot of the backstory. I suppose I have some mixed feelings with how they were implemented. While I do think discovering the diaries and emails fits pretty well into the context of this world (in some games you wonder why a character randomly recorded an audio log about some event, but in Quantum Break I do think their existence feels justified for the most part), but it does feel a bit strange at times to go collectible hunting when the plot and even the NPC's are urging you to move forward. As I preferred not to restart a level later on to get missed collectibles, I wound up slowly combing through levels to find everything in one go, even as the game urged me at times to advance the story. And yes, part of this is my obsession with collecting everything, but the thing is if you really are interested in the story, it behooves you to find them all and get a better understanding of the story.

I still hope Life is Strange's system for going back to collectibles catches on in other games. While Quantum Break is good about not requiring you to replay an entire level again to save collectibles (it does so as soon as you find it), a system like LiS that lets you go back to specific sub-sections of a level (and telling you what you've missed in each of those sections) would have been greatly appreciated.

So to end this long post, I certainly liked the game a lot and I do feel tempted to do a second playthrough on Hard at some point to pick up that final achievement. There are at least 3 combat encounters I dread having to repeat (especially the final boss) on a higher difficulty, but I think I would enjoy experiencing this story a second time, especially a few years down the line after time has made me forget some of the finer details of the plot. If they eventually do make a sequel (and I certainly would welcome one), I suppose that would be the perfect excuse.
 
Finished act 4 and episode 4. I kinda-sorta enjoyed the show, but I have an idea of what it amounts to in the final act, and I kind of hope it's more than I think it is. I wasn't planning on playing more tonight but I may as well finish it out at this point.
 

Khaliss

Banned
Off topic, I know, but I just wrapped up Alan Wake. Oh my god it's incredible

It's not an old game if you've never played it! Never too late to find hidden treasures.

Back to Quantum Break I'm on my first "televised" episode and I'm happily surprised! The production value is decent and it picks up immediately after I made a certain choice.

I was very reluctant about that feature (Hello "Night Trap" & "Sewer Shark" on SegaCD!!) But I wanted a nice little story driven game and I'm quite happy with it so far.

It also makes me want to rewatch "The Wire" all over again.
 
Top Bottom