3.5/5 ★ – jbcrowe's review of The Quarry.

When I first played Until Dawn in 2016, I remember being like "Damn these facial animations are scary real! These graphics are photo realistic! There's no way it can get better than this!" Now, in 2023 playing The Quarry, I'm sitting here going "Damn these facial animations are scary real! These graphics are photo realistic! There's no way it can get better than this!". Supermassive Games are working some crazy magic over there, I've never seen skin and pores and sweat and blemishes and everything look this insanely good on faces before. Naughty Dog and Sony Santa Monica are also up there, but Supermassive Games, considering their titles are narrative, mostly cutscene-heavy games, can hone in on his with ultra precision and make your brain constantly feel like you're watching the real actors instead of animated likenesses. I really enjoyed The Quarry, in some ways more than Until Dawn and others less. The cast is great, the personalities all varied and some you like more than others, and the setting is fun to explore/be trapped in. Some characters clearly outshine others, not just in how they act in the game but the performances themselves. I especially liked the performances for the characters of Laura and Travis. The latter is portrayed by Ted Raimi, just one of many horror affiliated actors in the cast. And like Until Dawn, the game references and pays tributes to so many horror movies and tropes/cliches/easter eggs. Supermassive also give NetherRealm studios a run for their money in terms of graphic violence. The Mortal Kombat games go as hard as possible on the levels of gore in their fatalities, and Supermassive are right there with them; some of the deaths and gruesome outcomes these characters face are downright insane. Not for the faint of heart - some show you the death as it happens and that's it while others are like, here's a super detailed close up, check out all the detail we put into our gore! The things I didn't like, is how the story wraps up near the end; they really pack a lot into the last few chapters and it feels like shit just happens all of sudden to certain characters and you're like "What? Huh? But... Okay" and then you switch to another and it's all very quick. Definitely some anti-climatic resolutions when so much time is spent on the build up, setup, mystery, everything else. However, my main gripe with this game: the fucking songs that play! I'm sorry if I sound like a music snob, but there's so many absolutely terrible songs that play here, all the time. A quiet walking segment, a dialogue moment between 2 characters, after a big shocking moment happens, they just pop up all over the place and none of them are good. Some twee cover of "Wise Up" by Aimee Mann plays at one point instead of the original and it was just eye-rolling bad. There are a few here that are so cringe-y and terrible that it had me shaking my head that anyone thought they were a good idea to include. Not just in the context of the scene, but at all. Bad bad songs! The only one I enjoyed was the using of "Daydream Believer" by The Monkees at the end as you see the results of the night before, and that's only because I'm a big Monkees guy. Anyways.. enough curmudgeonly whining about bad pop music, this game was great and definitely worth a playthrough for fans of this type of gameplay. It's a blast to unravel the mystery and decide what to do with all of these characters, as these games are so good at making you think you made the right decision, only to have it blow up in your face.