Rating: 18V
Developer: Remedy Entertainment
Platform: Xbox One
Initial release date: 5 April 2016
Mode: Single-player video game
Nominations: The Game Award for Most Anticipated Game
Composers: Petri Alanko, John Kaefer
Genres: Third-person shooter, Action-adventure game
 
Description
Quantum Break is a third-person action game with cover shooter mechanics. The game's protagonist is Jack Joyce and it starts in medias res at the fictional Riverport University, set in the Northeastern United States. He is there with his gifted brother William Joyce who works at the university as a physics scientist. They are experimenting with time travel and at the start of the game it is revealed right away that the experiments have gone wrong. They also cause stutters that affect the flow of time in the everyday environment. Jack needs to escape from the facility with his brother while soldiers arrive, attempting to cover up the disaster. His brother is soon taken away and Jack looks for a way to find him back, with the help of a woman called Beth Wilder he meets early. Jack, together with Paul Serene introduced later on, both receive different time-manipulation abilities through the experiments. They are initially best friends, but their powers take them in different directions. Unlike Jack, Paul has precognition and can foresee the future. He wants to get rid of Jack and Beth to be the only one who can exploit the powers.
 
The game consists of five large acts where the player controls protagonist Joyce. Between those five acts there are four episodes where the game follows antagonist Serene. These are presented as four episodes of about 20 minutes each of a live action TV series. They are watched, not played, but there are interactive parts to it. At the beginning of an episode there are "junction points" where major decisions can be made that influence the further events, leading to a branching story. Likewise, certain discoveries and choices in the acts, through 'quantum ripples', also influence the story in a minor way, so the TV series are not a fixed, identical sequence for every player.
 
In the acts Joyce needs to shoot his way through levels. The opposition mostly consists of soldiers who work for Monarch Solutions, a corporation founded by Serene, and hunt down Joyce for him. He can carry up to three different firearms such as pistols, shotguns and machine guns, each with their own ammo type. However, ammunition is limited, encouraging players to use the many time-manipulation abilities or to shoot explosive elements in the environment to take out enemies quickly. Weapons can also be picked up from killed enemies. Seeking cover is done seamlessly when near a cover option, just through movement, and moving out of cover is done in the same way, without using an additional key or button. From cover it is possible to shoot around or over it, and pop out quickly.
 
Different time-centric abilities become available gradually. These mainly focus on defense and improved mobility and do not turn the main character into a superhero who is no longer vulnerable. In the later parts of the game, enemies appear who have time powers as well or are much harder to take out, such as snipers. Joyce starts with Time Dodge to quickly move for a few metres. Others are Time Vision as a radar pulse to spot enemies through walls and highlight items in different colours, keep track of objectives, find glowing chronon sources and find places where time can be rewound. Time Stop sends out a wave that stops enemies and bullets caught in it for a short time, Time Shield creates a temporary shield surrounding Joyce stopping bullets and damaging nearby enemies. Time Blast and Time Rush are offensive moves. Blast sends out an energy ball that damages and throws enemies, while Rush propels Joyce forward quickly, as an improved version of Time Dodge, providing the opportunity for a melee attack. Except for Shield all of these can be used while moving and they each have their own recharge timers, so many of them can be used in succession as a combo of movement and attacks. The abilities can be upgraded over the course of the game by collecting chronon particles at chronon sources.
Not all gameplay parts are about shooting. There are also stutters in time that act as puzzle sequences. These sequences resemble mazes where everything is frozen in time. During these, an ability can be used to restore parts of the environments to a former state and create a passage to progress, as some kind of environment-based puzzle-solving. There are also many collectibles to locate in the acts, such as documents, computers and media, providing more pieces for the story.