The misplaced focus on less-than-stellar gameplay deflates the horror of Quantum Error.
To strike fear in the hearts of players, horror video games must accomplish one thing only and do it greatly, and this is to instill tension and the uneasiness that no matter where you go, there is danger lurking behind. This can be ingrained by artificially creating scarcity for your ammo, having the player crouch without weapons, and having to actively avoid combat or simply by some well-placed jump scares. Quantum Error technically has all of these elements and yet does nothing to properly evoke any emotions other than frustration.
Developed and published by TeamKill Media, Quantum Error takes big swings from the start. With hints of a sprawling sci-fi adventure aspiring for high-scale storytelling, the beginning shows you an unidentified meteorite crashing into a space station. This unknown object seems to corrupt and possess any person who touches it and shows them a sort of eldritch horror. Eventually, you take control of an elite military force to save government staff from a group of rogue terrorists and fail in the process.
It is a lot to take in the first 15 minutes. The government seems to have been infiltrated by these alien beings who can control people’s minds, and suddenly, all the world’s nuclear warheads go off ala Terminator’s Judgment Day, and your character Jacob is saved from the rubble. The game finally settles down ten years later, after a nuclear winter, with Jacob now being a part of a group of first responder firefighters.
Once the gameplay starts, though, that’s a whole other story. Enemies are hard to see, the animations are choppy, and the handling of the guns feels the opposite of fluid. In the tutorial, a good point to mention is that grabbing the hose and putting down a fire in a video game inspired by firefighters is mildly fun.
Having to open vents so that you then have to let more air into a room, then slowly have to go back into the room you initially had to enter to take out your level and methodically pull the door sounds like an exhilarating experience with a faster-paced movement, but Quantum Error’s snail pace process makes it all a rather uninteresting gameplay loop.
If you need to drag a person, you can only walk backward, and that becomes an annoying process as you have to look back again to know which way you are going without stumbling into a wall or fire. At its best moments, Quantum Error can remind you of other acclaimed games in the genre, such as F.E.A.R. or even SOMA, but at its worst, it can wear you out and make you want to take a break off video games.
Beneath the slow-burning struggle of the clunky gameplay, there is a salvageable narrative. As the title states, the cosmic horror element plays its cards well as it takes you out of your character’s perspective and shows you some random tentacles. To Quantum Error’s benefit, some action sequences are trying to be cool, with explosions occurring every few steps of the way.
Most cutscenes of the main character, Jacob, can be described as a one-note macho-man show. There does not seem to be room for much nuance beyond an unwavering sense of duty. Although that is demonstrably one of the best virtues a person could ever have, people are flawed by nature, and to have a main character with virtually no issues of his own detracts from the narrative experience.
A veritable highlight of the experience is using the DualSense’s Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers. Feeling the fire close on your controller, the heat vibrating on the sides thanks to the haptics, or the resistance of your rifle on the adaptive triggers is always a welcome effort.
Much has been criticized of video games where they give you the solution to puzzles right away when confronted with them, and there must be a balance to be struck, but in this case, extensive playtesting works. To have one of the instructions to learn how to do CPR three paragraphs long just shows how much of a lack of testing the process of Quantum Error went through. Making such a game is not an easy feat, but using all the tools at your disposal to release a great game must be used at all times.
The checkpoints of the game are punishing. You could be nearing the end of a level and have made sizable progress, but if, for some reason, one of the misguided attempts at realistic and unfair game design kills you, you are bound to go back to at least losing 5 minutes of progress, if not more.
Sadly, there is also a plethora of glitches and bugs that make the already tedious experience want to break you. Unable to crouch or prone correctly, subtitles sometimes fail to appear, and your items can go through walls, making it all that more difficult to properly use your fireman tools to engage with the environment around you. Being killed by the smoke is always extremely anticlimactic.
Quantum Error’s gameplay loses steam quickly because it tries so hard that it seems to lose its cool halfway. You cannot access the map at all times; instead, you have to memorize it and try to roam around the same-looking corridors and find your footing while having to backtrack and enjoy it. It is known there is a certain type of gamer that exclusively looks for this kind of obtuse video game, but even then, the struggle to look for any sort of enjoyment persists.
Another of the gory elements that continue in the playthrough is that when you use the axe, you can cut off certain limbs of enemies, such as the head or arm, which, for a horror game, is suitable. The dark and brooding atmosphere aids in setting the tone of the overall narrative of Quantum Error, but it can err into feeling so oppressive it is hard to even go through each level.
As you progress, there are certain Metroidvania elements to the game, where you must retread old grounds, earn new “turnout gear” with different tools, and look around for different points of entry to progress accordingly. You can obtain upgrades for your weapons, stamina, oxygen, and so on. The concept is intriguing enough to keep you going, but the lack of any pointers can become a drag in the long run.
The way Quantum Error panned out is a disappointment as there truly is an interesting story worth discovering. But the questionable design choices always get in the way of any sort of enjoyment. Just when you think it could be possible to lay back and start to like what the game has on offer, a deterrent to your good time will inevitably happen, and you will start to wonder whether it is worth your time or you should rather watch a streamer suffer in your stead.
