Quantum Theory isn’t really a game we have covered much, and I saw very little information on it aside from the trailer that was was released not too long ago. From the trailer I surmised that it was a Gears of War clone with magic of some sort. Now the demo is out and I can see what the game is really all about.
My first assumption pretty much sums up the game, it is very much Gears, but not in the right ways. First off, I must point out that the title screen is just the main character holding a giant gun, and I think it is supposed to look pretty awesome, it mostly look like the rest of the game, a red, brown and grey mess.
So to the start of the demo, you are introduced to the game with a brief explanation of these towers that are consuming the land in some fashion and they seem to be creating some demons out of the organic material that is growing from the tower. Your mission is to stop this from happening. Your main enemy are these creatures called Gillbarns or something else just as ridiculous.
The entire aesthetic of the game seems to be ripped right out Oblivion, more specifically the inside of an Oblivian Gate, many red’s, black’s and grey. It’s all very dreary and bland. It is hard to distinguish enemies from the walls or even yourself sometimes. The game is somewhat bright though, so you can see the decent lighting effects gleaming of the generic bio-masses.
I figured that perhaps the graphics and look of the game were lacking because they put a lot more work into balancing the gameplay, wrong; the entire play mechanics feel utterly clunky. You are a hulk of a man so I suppose it is meant to feel like that, but it makes it unbearable. You hold left trigger to aim, A is to run and cover, B is for dodging and of course right trigger is shooting. Seems straight forward but aiming is the worst, it doesn’t feel accurate or smooth, but it also doesn’t feel intense enough to warrant and slight shaky and difficult aim. I didn’t even feel like I was experiencing the combat more just trying to shovel through it to get to the next room.
One thing that always annoyed me about the Gears games is that you have to press buttons on the d-pad to pick up weapons and other objects, and the images for weapons really give no description of how the gun works, this game is no different. You even have to press down to pick up ammo boxes, that should be automatically acquired when walking over them. The main types of weapons I noticed were machine guns, shotguns and a very slow gun that didn’t really seem to do any more damage. Nothing really felt it did any damage actually. Firing the shot gun type weapon at close range took about 5 shots to down a basic enemy.
There is a unique mechanic that really sets this game apart from the game it cloned, and that is the ability to throw your sidekick, a female, at enemies to kill them quicker. This is sort of neat, and interesting to watch the first couple of times as it does a slow motion action sequence, but be careful because if the enemy doesn’t die then she will. She will regain life shortly after and there is a cool down timer for the throwing ability. It should also be noted that after you throw her you have a whole second and a half where you can not dodge, which is very frustrating. As far as I know you can not play as her, though I think she has some special abilities that may help, but it wasn’t mentioned in the demo.
The demo ends with a giant boss that destroys all cover and just continually shoots you, which is nearly impossible to evade, so I died frequently. I eventually just kept throwing the girl at him and shooting in between until he just died. It kept talking about a crack in his chest but that seemed to matter little when it came to his demise.
All in all, this is an awful game, maybe the development team was not given the time or money they required or maybe they just had a bad idea that was more poorly implemented. There is little redeeming about this game aside from the ability to just shoot stuff, but considering it is not at all fun to do so I can’t even say that is a plus. Even those this is not a full review I would still give this game, 3 peanuts out of 10 elephants.
