The Quite man was released for the PC, PS4 and Xbox one in 2018, it was developed by Human Head Studios, also know for their work in Pray (2006) and Rune, this game was released with a very negative reception, some reviews did go as far as to say it's one of the worst game of 2018, and honestly they are absolutely right.
I know this game had a quite troublesome development and that they had to rush this game development alongside Rune 2 (Which was also a really bad and unfinished game released the following year before they went bankrupt) I didn't do much research about the situation inside Human Head Studios but it's safe to say that they are a case of miss management, which doesn't excuse the fact that this game is AWFUL.
One of the first thing that appear in every game that I have ever played, from Superman 64 to Final Fantasy 9, is the Starts screen,sure some games have them better than others, some how good music a interactive menu while other have a bad music with terribly made sound effects a static and boring background, but every game has that and it's generally clear what each option does as long as you have basic understand of the langue in which the game is currently in.
But this game doesn't have that, instead the game starts on the pause menu in the first frame of opening cutscene, not only that there's no text saying what each option does only the icon, sure you can guess, what each option does but why didn't the menus like any other game ????
The lack of a proper menu makes the game feel like a leaked Beta Build of unfinished game, instead of a game that you can buy on steam, and this feeling extend to the rest of the game, the only good thing about the games menus is that the option while hard to understand at first because of the lack of text indication on it's functiom, they are neat and cute to look at.
The first 2 are pretty easy to understand , Volume and Brightness, the third one is subtitle, which is only relevant to new game plus ,I will explain why later, I have no idea what the fourth one does, and the last one is the credits.
It feels like the menus of a CD/DVD version of movie (If you have ever watched or ranted those) , which is neat.
Anyway I feel like I have wasted to much time in the menus so let's talk about the Game itself.
Gameplay
Yeah it's terrible, Probity one of the worst beaten ups I have ever played , The combat is pretty simple, X and Y are the attack buttons, B is to Grab enemies (Which is useless) , A is to rapidly dash backward to hopefully evade enemy attacks, the Right Trigger is use to run and the Left Trigger is used to trigger a super mode into the protagonist that you can use to easily beat one enemy and them only be able to use it again some time after (I don't know how long it takes to recharge the game doesn't tell you when you can use that.
This a Simple control scheme is not bad thing, the controls itself feel fine despite the main character robotic animations, the issue is that punching the enemies isn't satisfying the lack of proper feedback in whenever you actually hit the enemies or not, make the combat boring at best, and frustrating at worse.
At the begging of the game when you only fight 1 to 2 enemies that isn't a issue, the issue comes when you fight bosses or Tougher enemies in the late game, special considering this game doesn't have a proper combo system, so combat for the most part is a game of massing the X button into a bunching walking Punching bags until they die and use the A bottom to evade attacks, Boss fights in this game are terrible, you don't know if you are actually dealing damage or wasting your time, or even what are you supposed to do with them, when you win against it just feels like you got lucky, not that you actually got good at the game, not only that when you fight more than 2 enemies it also a very frustrating game , the game feels like it was not made for it, the camera get in the way, sometimes I can't see enemies attacking me and I get hit, other times there's 3 enemies attacking me at the same time and I have to evade 2 attack from opposite direction at once, it's just not fun to deal with this game's challenge, if you can even call it a challenge and not a game of patience.
But I could Forgive that if the Story was good.
Story
This game's Protagonist, I don't know his name, is Deaf and because of that during your first playthrough the game is muted outside of some frequent and annoying whale sounds, this wouldn't be bad on itself if this game's story was build around it being expirience muted, while the detailets where told in the second playthrou where the game is unmuted,however this isn't the case here, a lot of cutscene in this game involve the characters talking, to the protagnost that's Deaf which makes no sense, because of the fact that I can't hear what they are saying, 70% of the time I am watching 2 character opening and closing their mounths, which is it so boring watch, not only that but the story itself isn't good, Muted or not, it's a Plot or rescuing your GF against some evil Group, with a plot twist before the last chapter, this game uses Live action to tell it's story, and while I like the novelty, of live action, the acting here is low quality, which makes the boring story even worst to watch
Music
The game has music supresing enough but it's only unlocked on NG+, which makes the first playthou EVEN more boring, I get that the protagonist is Deaf, but it doesn't make any sence to remove the music because of that, most Videogame OST is just there to make the game more imersive and help the player feal more conceted to the character emotions, they don't have a cannon reason to exist, but when you finally unlock it, it sound like generic copright free eletronic music, not worth playing this game to be able to hear it.
Graphics
The game looks like a Generic low budget Unreal engine 4 game, if you have ever seen a bad U4 game you know how this game looks, most of this game's envirament is generic back ally and inside comercial building , not special either , the only good thing about this game visual is that some times, the live action scene are pretty to look at.
The only thing that I can confidantly say that this game made better than most game I have ever play, is the gameover screen, it's you waking up to see your BF faces doing some silly stuff, I personally find it cute, and it gives me the message of "Don't give up, remeber who you are fighting for" what is also Cool is that there's mutiple of them around 5 I think.
Conclusion
This shouldn't have released, and Square Enix made a BIG mistake on Publishing it, even if the game wasn't rushed to released in a unfinsed state it's would be a very generic Beat em up with a Bad story that has Live action with bad acting, this game, but the bigger mistake was me wasting my money on Buying it, I bought it on sale in my defense.
Thankfull this game is only 3 Hours long.
Avoid if you can.
Pros
- + Cute Game Over Screen
- + Menus remind me of a DVD movie
Cons
- - Unfinished game
- - Bad Graphics
- - Robotic Character animations
- - Annoying boss fights
- - Repetitive gameplay
- - Tiny Arena Sizes
- - Unsatisfying gameplay
- - Story was not written based on it's limitations
- - Bad Acting
4
Gameplay
Imagine Yakuza or Sleeping Dogs, but you couldn't feel when you punched a enemy and there wasn't any combo system.
3
Graphics
It looks like any bad unreal engine game, even ugly PS2 game had their charm, but this is just ugly to look at.
3
Story
Someone made a bad Hollywood movie and turn the mute button on, in a Story that was made around you being able to understand character dialog.
2
Sound
I hope you enjoy hearing whale sounds for 3 hours and copyright free music for another 3, because if you don't you are in for a bad time.
5
Replayability
The game adds "features" that should have being from the Start on new game plus making replaying a game a requirement.
2
out of 10
Overall
This game had a decent idea, with a bad execution with the icing on the cake being a rushed the development cycle, the result is one of the worst game on my steam Library.
Nice Review!
