Quantum Error

Quantum Error's proposal was interesting, but the final product delivers a confusing and meaningless narrative, harsh gameplay, poor level design and generic enemies. Only with a good discount and many fixes to risk venturing into the Nomad complex.

If your goal this Halloween season is to scare up some heart pounding, palm-sweating first person horror action, Quantum Error should be low on your list of priorities. Its stylish and unsettling camera work suggests a depth and mystery that just is not here. Instead, you’ll be terrorized by some extremely stupid and repetitive monsters and tortured by a painfully austere checkpoint system that comes with sometimes-gamebreaking respawns. Weapons are competent but rather mundane for the rich and moody sci-fi setting, and the ghost of missed opportunity haunts the firefighting system, which appears robust mechanically but is given almost no opportunity to justify its inclusion at all.

Credit where credit’s due: considering this is made by just four brothers, Quantum Error aims high, which is admirable. The execution is simply not there, though. This is a game that simply tries to do too much, and as a result feels messy. If you’ve got a lot of patience and really like the idea of being a firefighter caught in a horrifying situation, you might get get something out of Quantum Error. Most, though, will just encounter frustration.

Quantum Error desperately wants to just be a dystopian sci-fi CGI film, without any pesky gameplay to kill its momentum. Alas, there is a clunky, antiquated, and unrefined shooter wedged between the game’s Unreal Engine 5 cinematics. Love and attention was poured into the cutscenes, but the shooter is malnourished and not very much fun. Next time, just make a movie.

Despite having an interesting story concept, Quantum Error's underwhelming gameplay, terrible cinematics and horrendous voice acting drag down what could have potentially been a great horror experience.

Quantum Error is too ambitious for its own good, and try to polish the least interesting aspects while abandoning its original ideas. The result: something that feels repetitive and unsatisfying.

Quantum Error is very far from modern game standards and fails to deliver the experience promised during the promotional campaign.

There's nothing to recommend Quantum Error. No part of the game shines, and the ambition of a small team can't save it from the fact that ambition didn't pay off. The bad combat, incoherent story, awkward firefighting mechanics, and clumsy level design all come together to create a game I couldn't recommend at $10, let alone $60. There are too many games out there that do a much better job, and the unique ideas in Quantum Error are too poorly executed for anyone to enjoy.

At the end of the day, I ask myself these questions about Quantum Error given the many genres it is trying to tackle. As a shooter game, is it fun? No. As a horror game, is it scary? Nope. As a firefighter simulator, is it cool? Sometimes I guess. Would I recommend this title as a full priced 60 dollar game? Never. TeamKill Media has done a commendable job being only a team of 4 to come up with something this massive and ambitious. However, this is another sad case of biting off more than you could chew. This might be up your alley if you’re into janky, B-movie messes.

Quantum Error feels like a game the team had passion about. There are good ideas here wrapped in a package that is executed poorly on all fronts. It doesn’t help that the developers decided to enrage fanboy wars on Twitter leading up to the release of the game. It put it in a spotlight the game wasn’t built to take. The price tag also hurts as this is a full-priced game in a budget game build. I could be a lot more forgiving if the sticker price was around $30, but at $60 I cannot recommend anyone lay down the funds for this one. It is disappointing in almost every aspect.

Quantum Error is a flawed, frustrating and unfun slog that collapses under the weight of its lofty ambitions to blend multiple genres and mechanics on a limited budget and developing skillset.

The only interesting part of Quantum Error is the premise, hinting at some intriguing cosmic horror ideas. Unfortunately, it's buried underneath rubble filled with bad controls, janky performance, and humdrum gameplay. Unless a complete overhaul could be implemented, there's no way a patch could save this game from itself.

This is what a game looks like when a couple of guys without a proper financial support or sufficient experience bite off more than they can chew. Quantum Error is a disastrous display of amateurishness, poor and terribly implemented ideas, and, above all, overblown ambitions. Rubbish of the decade.

Terrible visual effects, ugly animation and constant objects pop-up clearly shows how the game is simply way too good for PlayStation 5 to handle.