For years, Remedy Entertainment have been pioneers of storytelling and gameplay. From Max Payne to Alan Wake, Remedy have started trends and awed viewers with their unique stories, and with their newest outing on Xbox One, is Quantum Break also able to hold a candle to Remedy's legacy?

Developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft, Quantum Break is a third person action adventure with an all star cast. Quantum Break was actually the first game ever announced for the Xbox One all the way back in 2013. So let's see if that long wait was worth it.

The end of time is rapidly approaching due to a time travel experiment gone horribly wrong. Starring Shawn Ashmore, Aidan Gillan, and Dominic Monaghan; Quantum Break follows Jack Joyce (Shawn Ashmore) as he attempts to stop the end of time with his new founded time manipulative powers while his once best friend, Paul Serene (Aidan Gillan), uses his powers to let the end of time to take it's course.

Time travel isn't exactly an original story basis, but Remedy have found an exceptional way of making it fresh again. Typically, whenever a story has the involvement of time travel, you can expect countless plot holes and "scientific" elements that make absolutely no sense. You won't find any of that here. Quantum Break features the most realistic depiction of time travel you will ever experience in a form of media. It's apparent that Remedy spent years researching the plausibility of time travel and how it could be applied to the real world. It's difficult to describe without experiencing it for yourself, but even with limited knowledge of time travel, Quantum Break displays the most true to life use of a time machine and the consequences that would inevitably follow.

Anyone who has witnessed a Hollywood actor in a video game knows the worry that follows. Hollywood actors phoning in their performance and waiting for their checks to clear is a common practice with video games, but not here. Everyone brings their best performance and every character feels real; Aidan Gillan as Paul Serene and Dominic Monaghan as Jack's brother, Will, being stand out additions. There is one problem though, and it's that you will never really feel that attached to anyone. Sure, they're well rounded characters, but you never really feel the same desperate need to help or save another character in danger like you would have in Max Payne or Alan Wake.

Quantum Break is further proof that true to life graphics are just around the corner. Remember how amazing the facial capture of L.A. Noire was back in 2011? Well, I'm glad to report that the technology behind Quantum Break manages to not only look better than the facial capture found in L.A. Noire, but also make you question if you are watching the accompanying live action show or an in game cutscene. Every detail of an actor's face is captured in shocking detail and each of their animations are captured so well that it looks like you are finally playing as a human being and not a plastic doll. It's also quite humorous seeing Aidan Gillan aged 17 years in reverse at the beginning.

Texture detail on everything from firearms, vehicles, walls, and the ground; to even little details like posters and TV/computer monitors are some of the best that I've seen in years. Even the time distortion effects are great and original. Every time Jack uses his time powers or the entire world freezes in time, the effects are neat to look at. Polygons are ripped apart and objects appear to look as if they are in two time periods at the same time. Like a broken mirror displaying an object from different angles. If time did begin to break down, this is what it would look like.

The only problem with the graphics lies in its resolution on Xbox One. This is the first time I was ever able to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. 720p is the base resolution for Quantum Break, but it also hosts 4x MSAA to present high pixel quality and complex shading/effects. While this is nice, sometimes the picture just isn't that clear and it's a shame because Quantum Break is a phenomenal game in every other regard. We can blame hardware limitations on this one.

Going into Quantum Break, I expected Alan Wake with Max Payne-esque bullet time. While that is, in a sense, what I got, that would be a huge oversimplification of the entire product. Unlike the first two Max Payne games and Alan Wake, Quantum Break is a cover shooter. Before preconceived notions of Gears of War cover shooters come to mind, know that Quantum Break is not at all like that.

Those who played the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider will feel right at home with this cover system. Unlike, say, literally every cover shooter on the market, you don't tap a button and become instantly glued to a chest high wall to shoot at enemies. Instead, once you are in a combat situation, Jack will immediately duck behind any cover he can fit under, but you can still move around freely. While this is an option, you will hardly ever find yourself doing this because of your borderline overpowered time abilities.

Within the first couple acts, you are given almost all of your time powers. Standouts include: being able to see through walls, the ability to dash across the room and slow down time to pick out targets to shoot, and creating a stasis bubble around enemies and firing into it so that a hail of bullets flies into them when the bubble dissipates. Even on the hardest difficulty, I dare you to die once outside of the tricky time manipulated platform puzzles. As long as you hide behind cover and give yourself time to heal when you are low on health you will probably never see the death screen.

The problem with giving the player almost all of the powers the game has to offer is that you will find yourself doing the exact same thing all the way to the end. It sounds like it becomes repetitive or even boring, but that's where the show comes in. Once you begin to tire of the gameplay, you have finished the act and unlocked a new episode, but I never found myself bored. In fact, I had to break myself away from the game so I wouldn't finish too quickly. Even after taking my time to enjoy every little detail Quantum Break had to offer, I still clocked in at a little over 9 hours (not including the TV episodes). This is a little on the short side for a purely single player experience, but the game is built around multiple replays so you can change your decisions and see how the story ends differently than your last play through.

Where Shawn Ashmore as Jack Joyce is the star of the game, Patrick Heusinger as Liam Burke is the star of the Quantum Break show. Shawn Ashmore is reduced to a mere cameo in each episode, but that's okay because Patrick Heusinger absolutely steals the show as Liam Burke. Blurring the lines between good and bad, the Quantum Break show mainly focuses on Liam Burke as he discovers the truth about Monarch Solutions and what is really going on with time ending.

The show features almost an entirely new cast from the game (with the exception of Aidan Gillen), featuring: Patrick Heusinger as Liam Burke, Lance Reddick as Martin Hatch, Marshall Allman as Charlie, and Mimi Michaels as Fiona. Although given less time than their in game cast mates, the cast of the show also have just enough time for all their characters to become three dimensional and feel like real people.

The way the show works with the game is that at the end of each act of the game, you are given control of Paul Serene as he makes a decision that will affect the next episode of the show and, consequently, the rest of the game. At first, the choices you make as Paul seem purely cosmetic in nature, but soon you will be making choices that affect the locations you visit and which enemies you will face. Each episode only runs for about 30 minutes; which is plenty of time to cool down from all the action you played through. You are also able to skip each episode, but that is not recommended if you are paying attention to the story.

The way Remedy interjected the show into the game without it feeling forced is impressive, but one thing almost kills it. The show is streamed rather than being on the disk. This may not sound like a huge problem, but one slip up in your internet connection (or no internet connection at all) will cause the show to buffer and will force you to watch in a resolution that can dip below 360p at times. The one saving grace to this is that you have the option to download the offline episodes as free DLC, but the download is 75GB, so get ready to clear up your hard drive to avoid the pesky "Content Buffering. Please Wait..." icon plaguing your viewing experience.

There are some genuinely impressive shots in the show and the action seems like it could have been intense to watch, but someone seems to have forgotten to tell the director that filming close up to the action and using a shaky cam is awful and (or should have) died off in the mid-2000's. Although small, it was still a bit disappointing that the show wasn't standalone. Say you have a friend that would love the story of the show, but doesn't play video games. You wouldn't be able to have them watch the show because the show depends a bit too much on the narrative only seen in the game. Like I said, it's a small annoyance, but it doesn't detract from the overall exceptional show that could rival the likes of Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. Let's hope for a season two.

The number one killer may be time, but you will have a killer time with Quantum Break. To this day, Remedy has never disappointed with their incredible writing and storytelling abilities, and Quantum Break is no exception. Despite a few odd graphical problems and streaming issues, Quantum Break is a definite contender for game of the year and a worthy successor to Max Payne and Alan Wake.

What do you call a decent enough PC game ported poorly onto consoles? Well, now we can call it 7 Days to Die. Developed by The Fun Pimps and published by Telltale Publishing, 7 Days to Die is a first person, zombie survival game not unlike DayZ. Although more akin to Minecraft than DayZ, 7 Days to Die has a stronger emphasis on crafting and defense from zombie hordes. Regardless of the overall quality of 7 Days to Die on PC, this review is for the PlayStation 4 port.

7 Days to Die doesn't have a single player story, per se, but you can find and complete quests scattered throughout the world. The way you acquire these quests is actually fairly unique. To start a quest, you typically find a note on a dead body or at a deaddrop. This information will be logged under your quests menu.

The quests themselves aren't all that interesting though. Just the usual, "Here's where to find good loot. I'll mark it on your map." Not bad, but leaves much to be desired. It's still a nice addition that I'm glad was included. Another neat addition is the tutorial repeating for every new game, this is actually a nice addition so you won't have to constantly consult wikis and 'how-to' videos, just so you can craft shoes.

Unfortunately this is where everything falls apart. First, the HUD and menu interfaces. Clearly no foresight was used in transitioning the HUD and menus from PC to console. During actual gameplay, your quick select items are on a row at the bottom of the screen. To switch between these items, you use the left and right shoulder buttons. This actually works and I had no problems with using it. But if you want to go into your inventory, you press square or X by default, and trip over the controls trying to navigate through.

In order to make selections in your inventory, you are given a circular cursor. Cursors work great on PC, but on consoles? Not so much. You'll find yourself highlighting or hovering over the wrong items even though are trying to aim it elsewhere. It'll be too slow at first, so you can change it in the option menus, but you can never find a perfect setting. It'll accelerate either too fast or too slow. It was an absolute nightmare to go through my inventory and was not a pleasent experience.

You are able to change your inventory categories such as items, character, map, and quests with the left and right shoulder buttons. That was the only part of menu navigation that actually worked fine. There were many occasions where I needed to navigate inventory to grab an item to save myself but the game's inventory sytem made it impossible. Note to future developers and publishers: cursors do not work well on consoles.

The graphics in 7 Days to Die are jaw dropping, but not in the way you might think. The textures on PS4 are unacceptable. These kind of low res textures wouldn't have been acceptable for a PS2 game, let alone a "next gen" console. Most, if not all textures are completely flat and are only one or two colors with no detail. This genuinely baffled me. I figured that I would just have to stand still for a second to let the textures load in, but they never rendered.

Apparently we got a new Silent Hill game after all. Konami must have just renamed it 7 Days to Die. Actually, that's not what happened. 7 Days to Die on PS4 just sports an incredibly low draw distance. You are only able to see maybe 20 feet ahead of you before you are met with an empty fog void. There isn't any subtlety to this fog wall either. It's almost a completely flat wall that moves as you do, and barely covers the spawn of terrain and objects such as trees and buildings.

Animations are no different. Everything looks so stiff and unnatural, save for a few animations on zombies. It will look good on occasion when a zombie stumbles back from hard hit to the head. The same can't be said for player animations though. In first person, even your hand looks like it popped a Viagra or two when you swing an axe or a club. Everything you do looks unnaturally stiff. Watching other players' animations in multiplayer is horrifying as well. You'll start to wonder who is really the lifeless. And this is all coming from someone who couldn't care less about graphical fidelity. Take that for what it's worth.

The gameplay suffers the same fate of borderline awful design as everything else. You start off by punching a tree to gather wood, crafting wood tools to gather stone, use said stone to craft stone tools and weapons, and eventually build your way up through the material tree. Sound familiar? Well, that's because it's the same formula used by every survival indie game since Minecraft. Movement is slow and clunky, hitting enemies or other players is a matter of luck, and there's no sense of accomplishment. It's a first person shooter without the polish.

Similar to every survival game ever, you have to constantly watch your hunger and thirst levels. Apparently you're Jabba the Hutt because you're hunger and thirst levels go down way too quickly. And good luck trying to find any food or water. 7 Days to Die is so stingy with resources. You can hunt animals with a bow and arrow, or you can get lucky enough to find some food and water in buildings. Those really are your only two options.

Surprisingly, there are lite RPG elements to be found in 7 Days to Die. The more you do any action in the game, you will grow stronger and better at that action or performance. For example, the more you chop down trees; the faster you can do it next time. This sounds all great on paper, but I hardly ever noticed any changes after leveling up one ability many times. Perhaps I'm jaded after coming from playing through a great RPG, but these elements feel like secondary ideas that weren't expanded on properly.

There isn't much to say about multiplayer. It's the same game just with other people, and the ability to grief and kill other players. It could make for a decent night of fun with a couple of buddies, but it's not at all fun with random people. You can argue that it adds to the 'you don't know who to trust' style of gameplay, but there is no fun trying to play a cooperative game with people who refuse to cooperate and will kill you as soon as you spawn. This wasn't only on one server. This was on every server I tried to join. People were either waiting around designated spawn areas to kill me and others or they just killed you on sight without ever finding out if you were friendly.

I haven't played a game this surprisingly bad in a long time. 7 Days to Die fails in everything it sets out to do, with the exception of its quest system, but that just isn't enough to save it. Unfortunately, I have not played the PC version so I do not have a frame of reference to work with. Maybe every aforementioned issue I found with the PS4 version isn't a problem on PC, and more power to PC players, but I can't recommend this game to anyone that can only play on consoles. If you must play a survival game on consoles: get Ark: Survival Evolved on Xbox One, Minecraft, or just wait for DayZ to finally come to consoles.

Two Years after the aftermatch of Human Revolution, Mankind Divided throws Adam Jensen and the player into a new world of hatred, prejudice, and oppression. After augmented people were sent into a killing frenzy, the natural world began to reject the augmented and their values. Augmented people and natural people are segregated apart from one another and those with augmented limbs or abilities are treated as second class citizens, and Adam is stuck in the middle of the turmoil.

Our battery acid gargling protagonist, Adam Jensen, is back and just as enjoyable as he was in Human Revolution. Adam begins as an agent for a task force in the Czech Republic that may or may not be controlled by special interest groups. As he arrives in Prague, the train station he stops at is bombed and all the blame is put onto the controversial pro-aug group known as the Augmented Rights Coalition. Now Adam must solve a mystery that could topal entire governments. If that all sounds somewhat vague, then it's supposed to. It's best to go into Mankind Divided with little to no knowledge of the events after Human Revolution.

Perhaps Adam isn't as likable as he was in human Revolution since we no longer can sympathize with him having no choice in augmenting his body. Adam finally embraces the machine he is and it's your job to progress through the story as the nicest guy in Prague or just as rude and abrasive as the Czech state police. Thankfully, you can always pick when you want to be good or bad, but you can also settle comfortably in the middle as well.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided also focuses on conspiracies much more than in Human Revolution. Often times you will have to choose who to side with during arguments and choose who to give plot important items to. I loved the return of the "this is bigger than all of us" conspiracies. It really helps harken back to the original Deus Ex.

The social commentary was enjoyable and rarely became preachy. Once in a blue moon you'll stumble onto a document or TV broadcast that does seem to be a bit one sided though. The social commentary also isn't forced down your throat either. Besides the Augmented Rights Coalition during the main story, you will only find it in optional newspapers, e-books, and television broadcasts. So if you disagree with everything Eidos has to say or get offended easily, you're in luck.

Side quests are also much more dynamic and satisfying to complete than in Human Revolution. Most times, you will stumble out of a building and see a commotion off in the distance. Investigating further will likely activate a new side quest to complete. My personal favorites were The Harvester and Last Harvest side quests. In those quests, Adam becomes a bit like a consulting detective when he helps an ignorant detective solve a string of murders upon augmented people. The revelation is great and is written in a way that makes the world feel so three dimensional. That not everything is about you and your adventures.

All is not good in Jensen town though. The story has major issues. For starters, new characters to the series are never properly introduced. They just sort of show up out of nowhere and help advance whatever quest you're doing. Adam clearly knows them and has a past with them, but they weren't in Human Revolution so my only guess is that these characters were introduced in a secret game set in between Human Revolution and Mankind Divided that was never released. The only logical explanation is that Eidos got too close to the illuminati with this middle game so they made Mankind Divided and just advanced the story a few years. Or they were probably introduced in the midquel novel and we're expected to buy that too.

The main story has issues too. I can easily look past its serious pacing problems, but what really bothers me is the blatant sequel bait cliffhanger ending. With Human Revolution, it could have easily stand on its own as a prequel to the original Deus Ex. But it seems Eidos Montreal is getting cocky and probably plans a trilogy of to tie into the original game. It also doesn't help that the main story only clocks in at about 12 - 15 hours. Side quests add about another 5 or 6 hours though. Which is a let down compared to Human Revolution's 20 hour main story and 10 hours of side quests.

"If it it ain't broke, don't fix it" is and isn't true in Mankind Divided's case. Not only is it clear that Eidos Montreal took fan complaints about Human Revolution to heart and remedied them, but they also built onto the established gameplay to make Deus Ex fresh again. What does that mean? Well the overall clunky feel from Human Revolution is gone, but it also doesn't devolve into generic first person shooter territory either. Combat, stealth, and ghost gameplay have been improved on dramatically.

Now no one approach to a situation is anymore viable than they others. Want to stealthily navigate around your enemies to get to your objective? Look around your environment. There is often a door or a vent conveniently placed near you to avoid frontal assaults. Are you one to tackle your problems head on? Loud combat approaches are made all the more enjoyable with a larger arsenal of weapons at your disposal as well as a much needed overall to the controls.

After meeting up with the ghost of Prince, Adam learns that he has unstable experimental augs hidden away in his body that can be activated at a cost. That cost is overclocking his own body causing overheating and severe glitches. This is actually a nice and believable explanation to addition of new augmentations that does eventually tie into the main story. The balancing of your experimental augs is actually well done as well. To ensure that you can use those augs with serious side effects, you have to temporarily shut down another branch of augmentations to cool your system. This can be overridden with a plot device about half way through the game though so you can use everything without consequence.

Augmentations are just as fun to use in Mankind Divided, if not more so. All the augmentations that could be unlocked in Human Revolution return with some new friends. New additions include remote hacking, titan armor, nanoblade, and a few more. Augs are all the more fun to use with the return of Biocells. Instead of having to recharge your bio meter with random foods and drinks, Biocells can be used and are now craftable, buyable, and findable. For those who don't know, this is an item that was absent in Human Revolution, but found in the original and Invisible War (although under a different name).

Weapons also have gotten an overhaul since Human Revolution. Darting between cover and picking off targets both lethally and non-lethally has never felt better. Guns feel much more in line with usual first person shooters and that's thanks to the new control options. Now you can choose between classic Human Revolution controls, new Mankind Divided controls, and typical FPS controls. Your augmentations weren't the only thing that got upgraded. Guns have always been customizable in Deus Ex, but now you can customize to your heart's content on the fly. All you have to do is hold down the reload button/key and Adam will hold his gun out and allow you to change attachments, rate of fire, and even the ammo type. It's a bit like Crysis, if that makes sense. None of the gameplay really feels streamlined from Human Revolution. It just seems that Eidos fixed the problems people had and added more to the game. More developers should take notes.

Unlike Human Revolution that featured multiple decently sized city hubs, Mankind Divided instead opts for one large city hub where the majority of the game takes place. Many main missions and side quests are played out in the Prague hub, but a few missions are played out elsewhere like Golem City, an augmented ghetto. While Prague isn't a bad place for a city hub, it just isn't as memorable as Detroit or Hong Kong from Human Revolution. The samey grey buildings do get tiresome after hours of exploring. Perhaps this was a design choice to make landmarks like The Red Queen stand out more, but it still doesn't make that "been there, done that" feeling go away.

The amount of detail, be it large or small, is incredible. From Adam quickly switching the safety on when holstering his gun, to enemies calling out your location and what weapon you're using in real time. Segregation is a theme and Mankind Divided, and it shows when you board a "Natural Only" metro car. Other passengers will glare at you and the state police will warn you not to do it again once you get off. I hadn't even realized what I did wrong at first when I stepped off the Natural Only metro car and got scolded by the police. I assumed that the segregation areas were just for show, but there were actual consequences for stepping over the line. It's clear that a special amount of love and care went into Mankind Divided that may be overlooked by many players looking for cheap explosive thrills instead

Even for 2011 standards, Human Revolution still looked a bit dated compared to other AAA releases at the time. Mankind Divided on the other hand looks downright beautiful thanks to the Dawn Engine. Clothing, faces, and weapons all look as if you could reach out and actually touch them. Bright neon lights reflect off of objects and NPCs. Rain will stick and drip off of Adam's well toned augmented body. Mankind Divided is candy for the eyes, for the most part.

Some textures don't get the same treatment. Textures such as certain walls, miscellaneous objects scattered around the world, and the little foliage that can be found are often incredibly basic textures that made me wonder if I was even supposed to be looking at them. But the biggest issue regarding the graphics is the frame rate. I played through Mankind Divided on the PS4, and I found an abundance of frame rate dips. "Dips" doesn't even begin to describe the problems with the frame rate. "Frame rate plummets" is a much better description. Even the act of walking down a lonely alley way can result in the frame rate tanking like the Titanic in a tsunami. Thankfully, the actual story missions stay at around 30 frames per second the entire time.

Besides the frame rate, the most noticeable issue with the graphics are the idle animations and lip syncing. Lip syncing ranges from serviceable to just plain bad. Outside of prerendered cutscenes, characters look like dogs when they have peanut butter in their mouths, filmed it, and then the developers just looped dialogue over that. Now what about animations? Well combat and takedown animations are great to watch and even seamlessly transition back into gameplay. Idle animations are another story. Often times characters will flail their arms about and shake their heads when they didn't say anything that would warrant that.

But by Philip K. Dick's ghost, that cyberpunk atmosphere though. Where Human Revolution was overflowing with cyberpunk cliches and a yellow and black color palette that often overstayed their welcome, Mankind Divided instead goes for a more nuanced approach to the cyberpunk genre. Much like the original Deus Ex. That doesn't mean Mankind Divided is any less cyberpunk than it's predecessor either. Neon still soaks through subtlety, especially in the red light district. Synthesizers still plays perfectly to the situation you're in. Whether you like to be bombarded with cyberpunk visuals and jargon or prefer or more realistic take on the genre is a matter of opinion.

If you thought Human Revolution's soundtrack was great, you're in for a magnetic treat with Mankind Divided's score. Following the gameplay's "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" mindset, the score in Mankind Divided is an orgasmic ensemble of synthesizers and cyberpunk good times. Expertly switching between slow and somber for depressing moments. Then ramping up the energy in each track as you go guns blazing after a botched stealth approach. If the atmosphere and story weren't cyberpunk enough for you, then the soundtrack is what you need.

The sound even factors into the gameplay. Just walking around a building that you're supposed to infiltrate can lead to wondrous discoveries. Many times I began to overhear idle chit chat between two NPCs discussing the building or location they are outside of that lead to me figuring out alternative paths that were pretty well hidden. Footsteps also make a welcome return. Nothing is more infuriating than a stealth where you can't hear your enemy's footsteps. Footsteps echo off of different materials and even your own footsteps are affected by the type of floor you're walking on and how fast you're moving. Thankfully, Mankind Divided remembers its stealth roots.

Elias Toufexis is back as Adam Jensen, but Stephen Shellen does not return to voice David Sarif. And that's a shame too. Shellen's performance as Adam's aggressive boss was one of the most memorable elements of Human Revolution. While Sarif's new voice actor does a more than serviceable job, it's still a shame that we won't hear "ADAAAM" in the right voice again. I'm not personally Czech, believe me I checked, so I can't comment on the authenticity of the accents of the Prague NPCs, but they sound believable enough. Almost every character has an accent so I hope it's authentic.

No game can be this good without an ugly sore hidden somewhere. That sore comes in the form of Breach. Breach is the incredibly unnecessary multiplayer mode for a single player centric game. Those who have played the original Deus Ex know that multiplayer isn't exactly new to the series, but not like this. Take the single player from Mankind Divided, neuter the gameplay, add actual microtransactions that forms a pay2win business model, neuter the gameplay even more, and bam: Breach mode. It isn't worth your time at all. Especially with new game plus for the base game. Luckily it can be ignore altogether.

To answer the opening rhetorical question: Mankind Divided proves that Human Revolution wasn't a fluke and the Deus Ex franchise has a bright future ahead of it. If you liked Human Revolution, you'll love Mankind Divided. It isn't exactly the definitive cyberpunk RPG, nor is it even the best in the Deus Ex serious, but it gets damn near close.