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The Quarry is the latest horror video game from Supermassive Games, the minds behind the smash hit Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology series. For those out of the loop, Supermassive Games specialise in interactive experiences that feel more like you are playing through an interactive movie than a traditional video game.
After their car breaks down, a group of teenagers is forced to stay one extra night at the summer camp they’ve been working at for the past few weeks. Unfortunately for them, tonight marks the night that something within the forest behind their hunt – the prey? Well, us of course.
Taking a page out of classic ’80s slashers like Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp and The Thing, The Quarry puts players in the heart of a horror mystery that will have you playing and replaying until you’ve achieved every single ending, of which there are many. Set in the deep forests of Upstate New York, players must help nine teenagers make it through the night, but be careful, because one wrong decision could cost the life of one or all of your characters.
Welcome to Hackett’s Quarry
Set primarily within one night; as the player, it is up to you to control nine characters, guiding them to survival the following day. Each character has roughly around 10-12 possible deaths that players can avoid, or if you are so inclined, push the characters towards.
The Quarry is an exciting and blood-soaked thrill and is instantly one of Supermassive Games’ best releases and one of the best games of the year so far. While the story is much to be desired, the mystery that surrounds it was enough to keep me enthralled and the writers did a great job at fleshing it out for a considerable length of time, as well as including plot threads that the players must piece together themselves.
Despite being a well-written, designed and acted experience, The Quarry clocks in at around 7 to 10 hours of playing time before completion, and it all depends on whether your characters make it or not because the deaths of multiple characters will cause the game to end a lot sooner than one might like.
It’s for this reason that I cannot justify the high price of The Quarry. The PlayStation 4 version will cost you £59.99/$59.99 for the standard edition and for the PlayStation 5 version it will set you back a hefty £64.99/$69.99.
The further I played through the game, the more I was confused over the price, and this is coming from a writer who received a download copy to review. But it is safe to say that despite how much I enjoyed it, and how much I loved going back, replaying, and avoiding the major events that led to the bloodbath that was my first playthrough, it just is not a game that’s worth paying £60 to £80 for – especially with the varying lengths of the entire experience.
The Deluxe Edition is even more egregiously priced, setting customers back £74.99/$79.99 so they can access ’80s-themed character outfits, instant access to the Death Rewind system, a Horror History Visual Filter Pack and a Gorefest Movie Mode option.
It’s difficult to understand the logic behind why The Quarry is priced so high, but it’s even harder to understand why the Deluxe Edition exists in the first place considering its extra features aren’t anything to write home about. You get instant access to the Death Rewind System which allows you to unwind up to three character’s deaths in one play-through (something which unlocks once you complete the game once), a Gorefest Movie Mode option (an option that could/should have been in the base game) and ’80s character clothes and an ’80s filter pack to fit with the ’80s-inspired game – it just shows that The Quarry should have been set in the ’80s…
That’s not even mentioning the lack of a free or discounted upgrade for those looking to migrate to newer generation consoles like the PlayStation 5. While many games have free upgrades, The Quarry has none and while your PS4 copy will work fine on a PS5, it won’t use the PS5’s graphics to its full advantage. If you did want to make the complete leap then you’ll simply have to purchase the game again.
The Residents of Hackett Woods
With an all-star cast that includes David Arquette, Skyler Gisondo, Lance Henriksen, Ted Raimi, Lin Shaye, Justice Smith, Brenda Song, and Ariel Winter, all of whom voiced, performed the motion capture, and provided their likeness to the game.
Each actor brings something to the table but the major standouts are Ted Raimi’s sheriff, Brenda Song’s Kaitlyn, and Zach Tinker’s Jacob, but the biggest standout is Siobhan William’s Laura, whose character is the one that the writers were able to play around with and expand her character development more than the others.
Throughout the game, you’ll come across tarot cards, and at the end of each chapter, fortune teller Eliza Vorez (played by Twin Peaks‘s Grace Zabriskie) will read you the meaning behind each card that you found and will offer you the chance to have a glimpse at one of your characters possible futures, à la the totems from Until Dawn. This gives you some advantage when determining certain decisions later on.
Although Zabriskie appears sporadically throughout the game, she is one of the better performances and I always found myself looking forward to listening to what she had to say, and seeing what she had to show. Lin Shaye’s Constance is another character that blew me away. Shaye, a scream queen in her own right, offers one of the best performances in the entire game and she’s not even in it that much – unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Justice Smith…
Pod Person
Justice Smith is an accomplished actor having appeared in Pokémon: Detective Pikachu and Ron’s Gone Wrong, but something definitely went wrong with his performance in The Quarry because it just felt like he did not want to be there. His performance isn’t awful, but compared to all of the other actors starring in the game, he is right at the bottom.
Ryan is the most inquisitive member of the nine counsellors you will play as. He’s a bit awkward, but beneath that he’s charming. Smith nails the awkwardness of Ryan, but he gets a bit carried away with it making Ryan a one-note character for the majority of the game. It also doesn’t help that Smith plays him like a Pod Person from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, almost completely void of emotion, which isn’t very fitting for survival horror.
Ryan is one of the characters that you have the chance to ‘romance’ with and the decision lies in your hands – will you choose Kaitlyn, Dylan, or neither? Naturally, I chose to romance Dylan, who before the engagement between him and Ryan, was one of the more unlikable characters. But their blossoming summer fling helped both Ryan and Dylan become a lot more likeable and bearable.
Until Dawn 2?
The Quarry was envisioned as a spiritual successor to Supermassive Games’ 2015 video game, Until Dawn, but it still plays as if it’s a pseudo-sequel. To the point where it became a little too familiar. As someone who played and loved Until Dawn, Supermassive Games took far too much liberty in copying a lot from their previous game. So much so, that you could switch out The Quarry‘s villains for Until Dawn‘s Wendigo and it wouldn’t even change the plot that much.
Both experiences are similar, not just because of the style, but everything that occurs within the game. Both are set in desolate forest landscapes, and both feature a hunter that may or may not be hunting you, the game’s primary antagonists feel like reskins of Until Dawn‘s. The similarities are so striking that it makes the high price point even more baffling.
Where The Quarry does excel is with its couch co-op mode. Supermassive Games have listened to fans who love playing their games with friends and have included a co-op function that allows you and your friends to play together by choosing who you will play as and all you have to do is pass one controller to each other when it’s your turn. It’s a simple addition that went a long way for me since I played with my friend, and switching between each other and controlling our own journey made the experience even more fun than Until Dawn.
Buy or Not to Buy?
Obviously, I cannot tell you what to do, and if you are excited to play The Quarry then I say go ahead and pay for it, especially if interactive games like Telltale’s The Walking Dead, Life is Strange, and of course, Until Dawn, are games you love to devour then you should absolutely purchase The Quarry. However, it might be worth waiting until the price drops or it becomes available on Game Pass and the PlayStation Network for free. The game should have been capped at £50 with the Deluxe Edition costing £60.
But pricing aside, despite its varying runtime and striking similarities to Until Dawn, The Quarry is a fantastic game that is worth replaying over and over again.
This article was edited by John Tangalin.