Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Nov 2, 2018

  This "game" is a 3 hour long movie with sloppy beat 'em up sections in-between FMV cutscenes, do yourself a favor and watch a playthrough online instead of paying 15€ for the worst beat 'em up this year.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 2, 2018

  You know, ever since this was revealed at E3, I was excited about this game. I really was. Then I sorta forgot about it. Fast forward to today, when I noticed that the game finally came out. Me, having time and $15 on hand, decided to give it a go. 4 hours or so later, after I beat the game, I felt like I wasted my time and money, and felt an immense amount of disappointment. The first issue I noticed was the 39GB file size, which I at first shrugged off because of the nature of the game itself, being an FMV-filled game. Then I actually opened up the game, and faced myself with an extremely barebones graphics options menu, with only general quality settings (low, medium, high, and ultra), and resolution. With a generic looking menu to top it all off. I, again, shrugged it off because I figured there wasn't much to configure, and also figured that this was a console game at heart, hence the barebones PC specific menus. I’m going to get back to the graphics thing a little later. Then I started the game, and found the intro cutscene to be fairly high-quality, so I forgot about the issues. Then I got into the first fight scene. I had absolutely zero idea what to do, since the game didn’t give me a tutorial besides a slightly cryptic thing in the pause menu. Then the game shut off the audio completely in the cutscenes besides some weird sounds. I had zero idea what any of the characters were trying to convey, even though their lips were moving and there was some sign language (which I barely understand). Look, I know the whole point of this game is that you’re a deaf guy or something, but please clue us in somewhat as to what’s going on, at least. So I slogged through the game more, beating up the same exact stereotypical thugs and businessmen from scene to scene, watching the long-ass cutscenes, look at some girl staring at me every time I died, and figuring out how to beat the bosses when I got to the final chapter. It all went downhill from there. The game started to drop frames down to like 30fps at times. Even though I’m using an GTX 1050 4GB-equipped gaming laptop, surely it’s enough to run the game parts at a locked 60fps, right? Wrong. At ultra, I couldn't run it at 60, naturally, at high, I could, but the end parts dropped to like 30fps, medium was the same but at around 45-50fps, and at low, it was fine, but it made the game look more ugly than it already did. If there was more graphic options than just general quality level and resolution, this wouldn’t be an issue at all, as I can just tweak whatever I don’t need. Then I got to the final boss, and just laughed. [spoiler]You have to fight your own dad from what I can tell, because the game doesn’t have much in the way of twists, I guess.[/spoiler] Then, after that, I listened to the (admittedly nice) ending theme, and quit the game. I contemplated about what the actual fuck I just played for five minutes, and decided to write this review. The cherry on top of the entire shitfest, however, is the fact that it’s riddled with Denuvo DRM for no good reason besides to treat paying customers like criminals, because you’re not missing much if you watch a playthrough of the game for free, and the game is $15 usually. And for a game that's $15, why even go through the effort of putting DRM on it? They said something about an update that will explain more stuff by enabling the sound in the cutscenes, but I highly doubt they’re gonna fix much beyond just that, and I don’t think I’ll gain enough energy to go through the game again. Overall, I think I played the worst game of 2018, and while that’s quite a bold statement, I have plenty of reason to give it that title. Shame on you, Square-Enix and Human Head Studios, I thought you guys were better than this. And lastly, I couldn't find the wallpapers I was promised. Grr. Edit: I just played through the first chapter or two with the sound update, and all I have to say is: why did the game have to go with the no sound thing in the first place? With that being said, I would have excused the game parts somewhat if there was sound in the cutscenes in the first playthrough. However, I still don't recommend the game due to the fact that you have to play through the game once to even get sound in the cutscenes. Still no wallpapers either. Double grr. And lastly, to everyone who thinks a GTX 1050 (the 4GB VRAM version especially) isn't that strong enough in general, shut the fuck up. Really. GTAV, MGSV, and Yakuza 0 run with most, if not every setting at very high and/or max at 1080p/60 on this card for me and not only run better, but look way better than this pile of garbage. There is no excuse on why a very simplistic beat-em-up like this should be dropping frames. It's not like I'm trying to run the game at 4K, either. And it could clearly run this at 1080p/60 had some of the lighting effects been toned down, which I can't even do, as again, it's only general quality level and resolution I can set.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 2, 2018

  I feel like such a jerk, I hate to leave a negative review, I'm usually the sort of person that If i don't enjoy a product I simply don't give it any review at all. This game is so underwhelming. I mean its nice to include a game where the main character is deaf, as far as I'm aware that's pretty unique. But experiencing an FMV where nearly all the spoken dialogue is muted to the player is pretty lacklustre. Sorry to the devs but this experiment simply didn't work. The only positive is that the actual movie sequences are of very high quality.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 4, 2018

  [h1] Oh wow, I have just wasted my life! [/h1] So when I had first purchased this game on the day of its release I had decided to take a risk. I typically do not buy games as soon as they come out, instead I opt to wait for reviews to come out and then decide based on the information provided if the game is worth my money and time. This time, however, the concept had grabbed my attention and I decided to put it in my cart along with the other gams I had purchased on the last day of the Halloween sale. I can tell you without a doubt that this game deserves neither your time or hard-earned cash. As a matter of fact it saddens me that at least 148 people (including myself) at the time of me writing this have actually given money to the devs and publishers for this absolute trash fire of a game. I wouldn't even say this game is worth making a written review for, but I decided to just so I can warn anybody else from making the same mistake as I did on November 1st. This review will cover every aspect of the entire game. I mean the ENTIRE game. This is mostly because I believe this game has no real redeeming qualities that warrant going through and experiencing it yourself. The funny thing is that I recorded my entire playthrough of this game, took notes, and even began drafting a script for a video review I was going to do, but utimately scrapped it all at the end of the game because the whole time I spent playing this was worse than the existence of Scrappy Doo. Honestly, no one would be surprised if they saw my little notebook I had while playing the game, which has "WHAT THE F*CK IS HAPPENING!?" written numerous times over the five pages of notes I had jotted down. This is one of the worst fuster clucks I have ever experienced in my life and really it all comes down to this game's main attractor/gimmick of the main character, Dane, being deaf. Now you would think that this would be an interesting aspect of both the narrative and the gameplay... You would be wrong. In terms of gameplay this is a basic beat em' up and in terms of story it equates to a silent film without any concern for people actually being able to understand what they are watching. Cutscenes have no sound besides a sort of windchime noise when people talk and booms and thuds whenever anything makes contact with anything. This makes for some flat, boring cutscenes in what could have otherwise been gripping and interesting because you immediately disassociate yourself since you can only get minimal information from what they are showing you. Not to mention that every scene feels like they had recorded it all with the intention of having audio, but decided to shift to the deaf character's perspective to save costs on voice acting and sound design costs. There is a part of me that truly believes that they were slated for a release date and SOMEHOW there was a catacalysmic error with the game's sound and they had to come up with a solution fast because of the deadline, so they just made everything silent or muffled and claimed that you are living through the eyes of Dane. This theory is sort of supported by the fact that they are adding dialogue in later. No matter the reason, the choice just makes the games narrative confusing and strips away any chance of there being possible positives in the acting, because the gameplay certainly won't win any awards. All there is to the gameplay is the combat and it is clunky, glitchy, poorly thought out, shallow, and overall unenjoyable. I honestly thought this game was amazing in the first minute of real gameplay, although the novelty of the deaf character and seemingly flashy combat wears off immediately when you play anything more than a minute of it. You realize really fast that what you experience in that first minute of combat is all there is to the game with the exception of bosses (I will get to them in a moment). Dodging barely works and there is no block button, so there is no solid way of avoiding damage if it is coming your way unless you run away from your adversaries. It took no time to figure out that you can just cheese all of the fights in the game by punching an enemy, running away, circling back, and punching them in the face again. All of this is repeated until you can use your focus attacks, which charge up in a couple blows. This dumb as hell strategy is more viable than the actual intended combat. Despite having this fool-proof strategy I did end up dying a LOT in this game and while I will acknowledge whenever I am a bad player (which is more frequent than I desire to admit), I cannot say that any of these deaths were "fair". It is impossible to tell how much damage any attack is going to do due to the limp fighting animations of the enemies. Blows that look as if they wouldn't really do any substantial damage to you end up taking you down to a critical state of health and you would have never guessed because their punches look akin to those of wacky inflatable arm flailing tube men. Bosses are epecially guilty of this, again, more on them in a little bit. These poor attack animations in combination with the atrocious hit detection make for an obnoxious time. Now, I promised that I would discuss those piece of sh*t bosses and I finally will. These bosses somehow manage to be the lowest point both narrative and gameplay-wise. On a technical level they are held together by strings, amazingly being the most glitchy part of an already glitch ridden hunk of software. Whenever you swing your fists at them nine times out of ten your hits will phase straight though them and they will laugh you off and beat you to death. Astounding! Not only will the crazy bugs the bosses bring confuse you, but the story also becomes so much more confusing when you encounter them. I assume some crazy plot twists are happening in the cutscenes, however everything is silent so I have no idea what is being said, so it makes for a real puzzling endevour attempting to piece together what is happening. The thing that I think disappoints me the most is the fact that they squandered the potential of a deaf protagonist. They could have incorporated his disability into gameplay, made it to where subtitles actually pop up when Dane is talking/signing or when he is reading people's lips just so there is some understanding to the story, and made it to where his disability is why there are gaps in the mystery of his mother's death, adding intrigue. The overwhelming majority of the game is just bad. It's bad. This is a bad game, but I will give credit where credit is due. The ending credits song is nice, the mask design is cool, and the mocap is done considerably well... Yeah, that is all I got for the positives. I am not kidding. I tiny voice in the back of my head suggests that this was made by an entirely deaf dev team, for deaf people so that they could enjoy a well thought out, complex tale that they could really immerse themselves in, while at the same time saying, "Now you know. Now you all KNOW what it is like to live in our world and constantly be on the outside of the loop." Unfortunately, this is not the case. I know this because deaf developers and game directors would not constantly forget to have other actors only talk to the deaf character when they are actually looking at them, so they are talking TO them, not AT them. This happens so many times that I could not even be bothered to keep count after a certain point. Do not buy this game. Do not let your friends and family buy this game. Don't let your cat walk across your keyboard on this game's store page lest it, by some miracle, accidentally purchase this game. Don't let your bullies buy this game because it will just make them hate their lives more and will need an outlet to vent their newly found frustrations from this game (and that would be you!). They do NOT deserve the money and if I could make them refund the time I spent playing this game I would go to any length to get it back.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 27, 2021

  I was born deaf and this game made me wish I was blind too.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 3, 2018

  This game could have been something good. Something special even. The quality of the live action scenes is really high. Very few FMV games delivered something similar in terms of production values. The first few minutes are great. They have complete audio. But that stops quickly. The rest of the 3 hour experience is silent except for some ambient noises. It just doesn't make any sense. There is no voice over and no subtitles. Yet the game is full of minutes-long dialog senses. After some minutes I thought this must be a mistake. I checked that the subtitles are activated in the menu. I browsed the forum. It had to be a bug. Well, it isn't. This is a deliberate choice. It is deliberate that you spend a significant chunk of your play time watching people have conversations that you don't understand. How could anyone think this was a good idea? The protagonist is obviously able to lip read and even talks himself several times. The quiet man is not so quiet after all. It's just you as the player who gets left out. Even when that happens you don't get audio or subtitles. So, everyone involved - including the guy you play - understands more than you. It just doesn't make sense. And the whole idea that the player is deaf doesn't even add anything to the experience. You could easily take that whole idea away, Let him hear normally - it wouldn't change anything about the story or the gameplay. So, story-wise this game is already a failure. All you can do is try to guess what the heck is going on. The gameplay is no better. The combat is extremely bad. The game doesn't explain anything. I still don't know what exactly the L1 ability is supposed to be. And when I can use it and when not. Does it charge, and that's the reason why it works only sometimes? No idea. The grab function seems utterrly useless. Evading barely ever works. The camera sometimes loses it completely. I have lost quite a few fights because neither my guy nor the enemy was visible. The save spots are super far apart. Which would not be a problem if the game didn't crash. But it does. I made it quite far. But then it crashed. So i started it up again, played 20 (!) minutes, was almost where i was before - and it crashed again. Not sure i'll even try to finish it. I love FMV games. I am willing to forgive a lot. Mediocre or even subpar gameplay is something I will happily accept as a trade-off for good FMV with a decent story. But this game doesn't deliver on any front. It is a wasted opportunity, nothing more. I still believe it is not completely hopeless. Fix the crashes. Add save spots after every fight and every cutscene. Give us the option to play wiith full audio. Then this might be a pleasant experience after all. Fiinal verdict: 2/10
• gamedeal user

  Nov 2, 2018

  Damn. There are so much wasted potential and missed opurtunity in this game. Let me just say that I think, the idea of a deaf protagonist is brilliant. But the combat is cluncky, the gameplay is repetitive and I think it's just gets really boring really quick.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 14, 2018

  [b] Target Audience: [/b] [I] Those looking to create story based games of their own, so they don't make the mistakes the Quiet Man made. [/i] [b] Summary: [/b] This may have set experimental storytelling back several years. My god, the game fails on almost every level. Despite some nice shots and some ok actor performances, the story is one of the worst in the modern day era. Look, I didn't expect the most complicated story from a game that was trying a unique presentation, it's supposed to have your interpret what you thought the story was the first time through without sound. The problem is that it doesn't use the visual presentation elements well to present possibilities for that story, refusing to use good symbolism and leaves too much up to the imagination. In addition, there are moves here in the plot that actually contradict what is being shown on screen, for the sake of “what a twist” reveals that make no sense when you actually think about it. That kind of storytelling could have been done well with subtle clues. Subtle. There are no subtle clues in The Quiet Man. There's just a mess. That's not even touching the gameplay, which is a horrid generic brawler type that glitches out more then it actually works. Expect models to go through objects, for actions to stop working, and for the enemy AI to just say screw it at times. If this gameplay was an attempt to make a player feel like a part of this world: it bombed. Massively. Oh, and it's repetitive as all hell, not even making enough variation for a 2 hour storyline. Hell, even a 30 minute storyline. I appreciate that Square Enix and Human Head Studios are willing to try experimental concepts. But this game should never have gotten a 15 dollar price tag and sold to the public. [b]Video Review: [/b] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE3bcGezseU [u] Lists: [/u] [b]Positives:[/b] [list] [*] The concept is reasonable on the surface and I appreciate the attempt at experimental storytelling. [*] The sad part is, the best part of this game is the sound portion regarding vibration done. A game about a deaf protagonist best feature is sound. Yep. [*] The actual framing of shots in the live action portions are done well. Good cinemotogrophy. [*] Good voice acting from several of the actors. Yes, when the sound is brought back in the second iteration. [*] It's a great resource on what not to do in visual storytelling. [/list] [b]Negatives:[/b] [list] [*] Does not take advantage of the unique deaf mechanic from a storytelling perspective. Leaves the wrong things up to question, and pulls things that make no sense. [*] Twists are setup that actually contradict the physical acting done. [*] None of the characters end up likable, or making you want to pull for them in the big picture. Sure, there's sympathy, but you needed a bit more story if you were going to pull off this type of storytelling. [*] The bad version of Indigo Prophecy syndrome. Aka, going into craziness towards the end, but it's not really justified. Comes out of left field in the bad way. Think “The Happening”. [*] Seriously, I have to question the script here. The Quiet Man concept makes absolutely no sense from how it forms. Many of the characters core desires and wants don't really jive with them. [*] Doesn't know how to be subtle. Sorta important in a game like this. [*] The combat is atrocious. Basic combat is a boring back and forth with little variation, and only tries to add complexity by throwing more people at you. [*] Weird visuals during combat and flashes make you wonder if the game is tripping out, or even what it's trying to tell. So many WTF moments. [*] Inconsistency in the use of ASL makes you wonder what Dane understands and what he doesn't. [*] Not explaining why your main character is deaf in a game that's centered around that is probably a bad move. [*] That's when the game is not being a technical nightmare. Enemies not responding, arms going through walls, your character deciding it's time to have a seizure: you name it, the Quiet Man does it. [*] Oh, did you want to do the same fights for 2 hours in a row? That's what you get with the quiet man. [*] It also does a bad job of making the “tutorials” it creates make sense, thanks to the timing of the [*] Why not make the unlock of the sound available day one after you beat the game? Why did it have to be a specific update? [*] For a game immersed in Deaf culture, you'd think the accessibility options would be there. They aren't. [/list] [b] If you want more reviews/information regarding games I've reviewed, visit my curator. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6861768/]Dragnix Curator [/url][/b]
• gamedeal user

  Nov 14, 2018

  Please don't buy this. I wanted to give this a chance cause I really really dig when companies take weird chances and risks on projects like this. I remember seeing this at E3 and thinking "This doesn't look great but I kinda wanna see what they do with the concept of a deaf protagonist" and I like them trying to marry FMV's with gameplay and trying to tell a more cinematic story. The problem is this game doesn't use any of this at all to its advantage. The MC being deaf doesn't matter because they all talk to him like he isn't anyway (I understand lip reading is a thing but there's points where people's faces are obscured or wearing a mask and they still talk to him perfectly fine). They don't use the characters deafness for anything gameplay related besides the first playthrough having no dialogue, no music and very muffled sound. They don't use visual storytelling in any good way at all to tell you anything about what's going on making the first playthrough completely incomprehensible to the player and the second playthrough being a bunch of breaking the Show Not Tell rule of good filmmaking while also making no sense and explaining pretty much nothing because it makes the assumption that you know who these people are for some reason. The combat is stale, repetitive, and doesn't change one bit whatsoever. You get no upgrades or new moves or anything. It's the most barebones beat em up and it really suffers because of the extreme lack in variety. The story like I said before is an absolutely nonsensicle mess that in my opinion borders on insultingly offensive at points, trying to tackle parental abuse and doing an absolutely horrible job of it and treating all latino characters like evil gangbangers that want to just kill and have no remorse. Every character is insanely unlikeable and super uninteresting. And somehow they got Man of Action (Studio that made Ben 10) to write it, Imogen Heap to do the ending theme, and had the assistant director of Half Minute Hero to Produce it, along with the studio that made the original 2006 Prey to develop it. This game is a mess. Please don't waste your time.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 4, 2018

  I HAD to refund this game. Not only is it simply painful to play, I reached an enemy who would do nothing but block. I would run circles around inm, and while the dance moves were funny at first, this quickly grew old. I certainly believe representation is important in video games, but I think a good gameplay mechanic and being a good game in the first place should take top priority.