M
y interest in ‘so-bad-it’s-
good’ media was recently
resurrected by the movie
Lifeforce. Since watching
it I’ve been looking for
something that makes me feel the
same open-mouthed awe. The Quiet
Man is a possible contender. Will this
not-actually-an-FMV game revitalise me
or leave nowt behind but a dusty husk?
My first fight – against gang
members that read like nakedly racist
caricatures, coupled with the in-your-
face transition from live actors to 3D
models – suggests we’re off to a start
that is ‘incredible’ in some sense of
the word. From there, I’m pounding
uninteresting corridors almost as
regularly as I’m pounding waves of
suspiciously familiar-looking goons.
And then I come to the first stretch
of what we can generously call ‘story.’Our protagonist is many things – quiet,
a Terminator-like presence in a gang
war – but he is not completely mute or
uncomprehending. Unfortunately, I feel
the latter as minutes-long cutscenes
crawl by with nary a subtitle. Bafflingly,
even though our protagonist signs and
speaks, we are left out of the loop until- arbitrarily – a second playthrough.
The game isn’t improved by the
reimplementation of sound. Whatever
hope I saw in the dead-eyed stare of
the 3D character models is shattered
by cringeworthy scenery chewing. It’s
hard not to sympathise as the Big Bad
holds up a bird skull mask and shrieks
“What the blorp! is this?” I’m not
having a good time – even after tangling
with the protagonist’s weird hangup
about his dead mum and confronting
a creepy mural dedicated to a woman
who’s her spitting image, completed
by the words “I CAN HEAR YOU WITH
MY BLOOD.” Even late-in-the-day
supernatural shenanigans can’t save it.
Another one bites the dust...
WHO?
Jess Kinghorn is
more of a lover than
a fighter. She’s got
a surprisingly high
threshold when it
comes to broken,
buggy, or janky
games, but has
she finally met her
match here?THE QUIET MAN
MINUTES-LONG
CUTSCENES CRAWL
BY WITH NARY A
SUBTITLE.DON’T MAKE ME PLAY!
Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every month we force
one of our team to play their most feared game
QAt least you know what’s going on during the fights: you’re thumping goons. Working out
exactly what’s going on in the cutscenes – with sound or without – is a rather different matter.WHAT?
An action adventure
beat-’em-up featuring
a deaf protagonist. You
follow his perspective
through haphazardly-
blended live-action
and CG, as well as
some decidedly bird-
brained scheming.INFO
PUB SQUARE ENIX
DEV HUMAN HEAD
STUDIOS
RELEASED 2018, PS4
GET IT NOW PS STORE,
£11.99109retrostation