The Quarry – Review
Even though I’ll do everything in my power to avoid giving anything away about The Quarry’s plot, I can’t promise that I won’t give away some of the things that make it stand out as a superior horror adventure film. It’s mostly plot, but it’s an interactive story in which you make split-second decisions and witness rapid-fire events. A group of counsellors at a quarry-based summer camp are the focus of this story about a night of confusion and calamity.
Hackett’s Quarry summer camp’s cool young adults have just bid farewell to the children they’d been looking after for a month. All of a sudden, there’s a problem with the car! Mr. H (David Arquette, who appeared for about five minutes total of my eight-ish hour playthrough, so fans may have buyer’s remorse on this front) is completely alarmed that everyone will have to spend another night at the camp. As you’ll discover, Hackett’s Quarry is both a) haunted and b) awash in monsters, which is why Chris Hackett has decided to keep such a child-centric organisation open despite the fact that it’s a dangerous place to be.
Keeping as many people alive as possible is the goal of the game; this extends beyond the control of the core group, by the way. As in any of the previous Dark Pictures Anthology games, this depends on the complex, cumulative warp and weft of your choices and actions. Is it possible that failing to open a door at the outset will have consequences down the road? If you’re mean to Ted Raimi’s character Travis, what will happen? You should probably take the shortcut through the woods if your friend is in danger, but you’ll have to deal with a lot of QTEs in the process.
Some new innovations include three lives you can spend to undo the death of characters by returning you to the last choice that sealed their fate, easier QTEs, but also QTEs that you might want… on purpose – let’s just say two people struggling over a shotgun rarely ends well. Because of spoilers, I’m not going to mention any of the other variables that come into play here, but it’s an intriguing one. Even if your character doesn’t know where the trapdoor leads, you definitely do, so you’re relying on both instinct and cheaty player knowledge.
The Quarry is more enjoyable to play because it is more physically accessible than other Dark Pictures. It frees up your mind so you can remember that one crucial thing you forgot to do two hours ago. While it’s easy to see how the story could go in a variety of directions, even the results I got for my group of survivors left me wanting more – though not so much that I’d give it another go in its entirety. Couch co-op for two players is back, but you can also replay specific chapters or a movie version of the game to see whether “everyone lives” or “everyone dies” is the end. However, this still requires a significant amount of time.
The Quarry is actually quite amusing. To be honest, the camp’s motto is hilariously literal, and I want to give high fives to whoever came up with it. There are separate safety tips videos for each tutorial, the music selections are spot on, and your results roundup is basically the end of Animal House but the freeze frames say things like “had their head torn off.”
If a character dies that I really care about, I decided early on that I would only use one of my precious do-overs. For an almost entirely character-driven game, this was a huge success. As the game progressed, this actually became the majority of the characters. For me, Jacob the sensitive bro, Kaitlyn the practical one, and Dylan the DJ who is actually nerdy were some of the most memorable characters. Marvel effect (where everyone is a different flavour of wisecracker) appears quickly, so the cast spends a lot of time split up to avoid it. The fact that Ryan (played by Justice “Detective Pikachu” Smith) is just a regular guy who enjoys podcasts made him my favourite character by the end of the show.
Perhaps my greatest accomplishment was letting several deaths go because they were so good, implausible, and graphic in that retro slasher way that borders on being actually funny. More than any Dark Pictures game since Until Dawn, The Quarry isn’t afraid to experiment with and play with horror tropes and vibes. There are a few major character reversals throughout the story, but it’s safe to say that the guy running around the forest in his underwear is most likely going to be a dude, and it’s almost always a woman who takes the lead and assumes control. Despite the fact that this is true of nearly every female character in the game, it can be a bit exhausting to watch them all Girlboss at once. However, I’ll take it.
Your between-chapter guide, a mysterious old woman for whom you’re collecting hidden tarot cards, and an element of plot related to a travelling sideshow are less successful. If you’re expecting something predictable, you’ll be surprised by The Quarry’s defiance of expectations and avoidance of tired tropes, but it’s not quite there (and heads up for two uses of a word I know in the United States, but it isn’t in the United Kingdom).
You can throw in some QTEs or choice moments that feel like they cheated you on top of that, so The Quarry isn’t perfect by any means. Even if it were flawless, the price of admission might still be too much for some people. To be completely honest, I don’t find it all that terrifying. Even at its most climactic points, it prefers to keep things “tense and thrilling.” Even though Supermassive’s Dark Pictures Anthology had a lot of flaws, The Quarry makes up for most of them, and picks up the baton from the Until Dawn series as if it had never been there before. It’s creepy, funny, and a great summer treat for those who haven’t seen a monster film in a while.
