Killing time in Quantum Break - CNET

The third power, Time Dodge, is essentially a blink. As fans of Dragon Ball Z can attest, few things are as awesome as an instant teleport. And when Jack vanished right before a charging enemy and reappeared behind him, I couldn't help but smile a little as I emptied a clip into his back. Helpfully, Time Dodge-ing directly into enemies delivers a shoulder barge that knocks them off balance; good for when one of them gets the jump on you.

Finally, Time Shield lets Jack become The One (Neo, not Gabriel Yulaw) for a few seconds and nullify all incoming damage with a force field. This was particularly useful whenever we let our zeal get the better of us, which it tus out was all the time. In a sticky situation, it could be activated to give us the opportunity to retreat behind cover. Combine it with a teleport and you've got an effective cowering manoeuvre.

With all that power you'd think it'd be easy to steamroll through most enemies, but there are nuances that prevent this from happening. Each power has a different cooldown period, so while the Time Vision sonar can be used with little interruption, the rest require between six and 14 seconds to recharge, depending on how frequently they're used. This forces you to be mindful of what skills are available, and introduces a degree of micromanagement and improvisation when you're caught out.

Quantum Break forces you to understand and optimise abilities in the face of aggressive, intelligent enemy behaviour. Monarch soldiers constantly did their best to trap us by approaching from all directions. When in cover, they showered us with a hail of bullets to make us dig in, then followed up with flank attacks. When we retreated into rooms to try and limit approaches, they tued to grenades to flush us out into the open. At times it verged on overwhelming, but that pressure is by design. It's Remedy tuing otherwise overpowered skills into tools for survival.

Each skirmish is painfully intense, flitting between a power trip and desperate crisis management. The constant depleting and recharging of abilities gave combat an electrifying ebb-and-flow. Enemies also react to players' actions, calling out to each other when powers are used and compensating for them. In tu, their movements could be manipulated by concentrating gunfire or using abilities to funnel forces. This puppeteering gave combat a cat-becomes-mouse quality. As the game progresses and enemies gain powers similar to Jack, the strategy and execution grows even more demanding.

On those few occasions when planets align and you're firing on all cylinders, the synergy of abilities gives you a control over the battlefield that borders on predatory. There's an explosive energy to moving around the environment that makes you feel superheroic, even more so when you upgrade powers to add a new wrinkle to them. This is done by using Chronons (candidate for goofiest powerup name of the year), which are hidden around environments.

So, impressive so far, but I had some reservations nevertheless. Aiming always felt a bit loose regardless of the sensitivity setting, and the act of moving from cover to cover wasn't particularly satisfying. Sometimes it's tempting to teleport between points, which is perfectly permissible, but it means you're undermining the drama and tension of combat. Based on the slice of Quantum Break we played, however, it didn't prove to be a deal-breaker.

Of course, Remedy has some big storytelling ambitions for Quantum Break too. Whether the live action episodes work is the big question, but at the very least the delivery of them--specifically how they converse with the game--is interesting.

While the game focuses on Jack Joyce's side of the story, TV episodes interspersed between each act follow antagonist Paul Serene's efforts to catch him. Serene is also playable in-game during sections called Junctions. These force you to make tough decisions, the consequences of which feed back into both the game and TV show.

For example, early on in the game Jack runs into Amy Ferraro, a student protesting Monarch's plans to demolish a historic building on Riverport University's campus. After Serene's experiment decimates the campus, Amy--a witness to it all--is captured and players must decide her fate. You can kill her and eliminate the threat she poses, but this tus public sentiment against the company. However, use her to broadcast a false statement blaming Jack and you can make his life harder, but at the risk of her tattling if she ever escapes.