When The Quiet Man was briefly shown at E3 this year, it seemed like one of those new IPs that no one knew about but was on the fast track to becoming something potentially big. The November 1st release date that was announced a few months after and the $15 price gave pause for concern, but the game looked interesting nonetheless.
Having now experienced The Quiet Man, it’s unique, but very underwhelming. I think what potential buyers should bear in mind is that it’s a $15 title. While I’m not suggesting that you always get what you pay for, I am saying that this is a relatively brief experience and far from AAA quality. Further, the experience is at least as much about the cinematography and art value than actual, you know, interactive gameplay. This is a cinematic action game that is about half movie, half interactive gameplay, but the gameplay is very scant, and what is there isn’t good.
You play as a young man who is deaf and out to seek revenge for a tragic event that happened when he was just a young boy. He’s got his rage set on a large gang symbolized by the number ’33’ and who love the color green. Gameplay involves walking around in third person in short intervals and fighting off members of the gang in numbers typically ranging between two and a half dozen at a time. You will see the same gang members over and over again during the course of this about-three hour experience.
I liked that you go empty-handed — even when sometimes the enemy attack with clubs or machetes, you’re relying on empty-hand martial arts. Players can run (though the ‘rooms’ are always small), punch, kick, dodge, grab, and use focus to do a cinematic attack that is sometimes enough to defeat a foe outright. You can string together some great-looking combos, but the fighting felt over-used because there is literally nothing else to do except walk a very little bit, sometimes open a door, and fight some more. The combat is pretty cool at first, but it quickly gets repetitive and sketchy (and I say that as a fan of old school brawlers). During boss encounters, or against the enemies that spam-block, the limitations and gimmicky-ness of the fighting system shows with attacks that clip right through enemies but go unregistered, or bizarre movements by the enemies such as running into walls, kindly letting you stand up after knocking you down, and taking a beating while you hold them, only to suddenly attack back. There are also some difficulty spikes, even on the ‘normal’ difficulty setting, that seem to come out of nowhere to induce eye-rolls and frustration. Anyhow, fighting the same bad guys over and over again as your only form of gameplay has its place in dedicated brawlers, but this design approach just does not transition properly to The Quiet Man. Some kind of gameplay design beyond just walking a few feet before your next fight that feels incredibly similar to your last fight and your next fight would have really helped the flow and intrigue of the experience. As is, it’s just a little bit of walking, routine fight, long cutscene, rinse and repeat from the start to the finish.
And while I get this is a $15 game and it’s slanted towards the story/art side of things as opposed to a traditional videogame, and it’s only three hours long, the gameplay portion is just too void. The story itself is serviceable, and while your first play through is somewhat difficult to follow due to the intentional lack of audio (and subtitles), replaying the game with the patch just released this week fills in a lot of the gaps as it provides full subtitles for all of the cutscenes. I will say that not having spoken dialog and subtitles did make me pay extra close attention to the cutscenes because I was trying to piece together what was going on, something the gameplay itself wasn’t going to be able to offer. Though I will also admit that replaying through the game with the patch was more chore than pleasure. Anyway, being recorded like a movie, with live actors, is a throwback to the multi-CD games in the early 90s (and a nod to the genre’s semi-return more recently). Done properly, this can really work to a game’s advantage, and in the case of The Quiet Man I thought the actors and cinematography were pretty good. The action scenes are left up to you to play out, but, as described, that falls almost completely flat.
While it misses the mark in general and douses the hopes I had when I first saw the E3 2018 trailer, The Quiet Man does have some value. It’s reasonably priced despite its issues and brevity, and if you’re looking for something a little different, it’s worth a look, just keep your expectations considerably tempered.
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