The Quarry Review (PS5) | Push Square

pushsquare.com:

Republished on Wednesday, 15th February, 2023: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of February 2023's PS Plus Extra and Premium lineup. The original text follows.

Whether it likes it or not, Supermassive Games will always have its titles compared to Until Dawn. The British developer has been trying to top the 2015 hit for seven years now, and after a disappointing PlayStation VR project in The Inpatient and the inconsistent Dark Pictures Anthology, its next attempt is The Quarry. Completely detached from previous work and with a new publisher in the bag, it looked like the team had all the right ingredients for a proper return to form. However, it might be time to accept Until Dawn as just a happy accident.

The Quarry is neither good nor particularly bad — it comfortably occupies the space reviewers hate where a game is just fine. Ignore some impressive character models and the title has little to shout about. Ignore some incredibly frustrating camera work and there's not too much else to screw your nose up at. Perhaps its worst sin, then, is that after a very slow start, the game never truly picks up the pace. It plods along, revealing its secrets all too slowly.

Those who've played any one of Supermassive Games' past efforts, though, will find some of those mysteries to be common knowledge. Traditional gameplay takes a back seat as your dialogue choices and decisions dramatically affect the story, leading to different endings, relationships, and dictating who gets to survive the night.

If anything, interaction here is actually even less involved than usual as quick-time events are based on very simple directional thumbstick pushes and spamming the X button. A weapon can be