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.