Quantum Break port impressions

Break2

Remedy’s new shooter, Quantum Break, is out today. We don’t have a review for you, because we only received code a few hours before release. Rarely a good sign. My suspicions were confirmed this morning when I launched the game and it was running at 10-20 frames per second, even on low settings.

Being a fan of Remedy’s games, I’d been looking forward to playing it, and felt slightly deflated as my character walked around the first level in near slow motion. I played through the opening sections, expecting things to get worse when all the shooting inevitably started, but it didn’t. The performance actually got better, and the frame rate issues subsided almost entirely.

I don’t know what happened. It could have been a problem with my PC. Someone contacted me on Twitter to say the latest NVIDIA drivers were underclocking their GPU, so maybe it was that. I have no idea. But now the game is in a playable, if not perfect, state. The frame rate holds at 50-60 indoors, dropping to 40 outdoors. Some have suggested the game could have been unpacking data in the background, as I ran it just after the download finished. But these problems persisted for a good hour.

I’m running a GTX 970, an i7-5820K CPU clocked at 3.30GHz, 16GB of RAM, and playing the game on ultra settings at 1080p with the latest NVIDIA drivers. And, if it makes any difference, I have the game installed on an SSD. Hardly a monster PC, but well within the recommended specs. I tried playing at higher resolutions on my 4K monitor, but the frame rate, unsurprisingly, took a massive hit.

As well as the frame rate issues, there’s also some distracting pop-in, particularly with foliage. Sometimes you’ll approach something—a car parked on a street, for example—and you’ll see it transition instantly from a low-detail model to a high-detail one. You don’t notice this stuff when you’re in the thick of a time-bending firefight, but it makes the experience feel disappointingly scrappy sometimes.

Break3

The inconsistent frame rate doesn’t render the game unplayable, but it’s a shame, because this is supposedly one of the flagship games for Microsoft’s new Universal Windows Platform. After the sorry reputation Games For Windows Live had, this isn’t exactly going to enamour people to this new venture. And I have no idea why a digital copy of the game is £45 on Xbox, yet PC gamers are being charged £50.

One of the most talked about features in Quantum Break is the live-action TV show that accompanies it, which changes depending on your actions. I’ve just watched the first ‘episode’, and while the video quality is fantastic, there was some stuttering—especially in fast-paced scenes with a lot of camera movement. Again, I don’t know if this is a problem only affecting me, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I haven’t played enough of the game yet to form a solid opinion, but I’m glad my performance issues have largely cleared up, because now I can focus on reviewing the damn thing. Posts on forums and social media suggest others haven’t been so lucky—someone with a GTX 980 is allegedly getting under 30 frames on low settings—but not enough people have the game yet to get a real sense of how widespread its problems are. This thread on NeoGAF is worth keeping an eye on.

The PC version of Alan Wake is great, and Remedy have always served our platform well. So I don’t know if this is their fault, or if the game is suffering because of having to support the UWP. Quantum Break uses a new engine, Northlight, so perhaps it’s related to that? Who knows. I’m sure someone will figure it all out. In the meantime, I’m going to continue playing the game and hoping a patch will sort these lingering frame rate blips out. My full review will be up shortly.

Andy Kelly

If it’s set in space, Andy will probably write about it. He loves sci-fi, adventure games, taking screenshots, Twin Peaks, weird sims, Alien: Isolation, and anything with a good story.

Latest in Action
Monster Hunter Wilds' stockpile master studying a manifest
Monster Hunter Wilds' new gyro controls are a fantastic option for disabled and able-bodied players alike
Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 3.
Mass Effect's Jennifer Hale, who played femshep, 'saw no line' before she recorded them for Bioware's flagship trilogy: 'It was all cold reading on the spot'
A hunter hefts a massive Mega Barrel Bomb in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds players can't stop blowing themselves to smithereens with its rollable barrel bombs
A hunter poses with a large hammer as their palico cheers nearby in Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter Wilds weapon tier list
Naoe looking at the wrist blade in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Ubisoft backflips, says Assassin's Creed Shadows will support Steam Deck at launch, but I doubt I'll actually want to play it there
character creation in Monster Hunter Wilds
The best Monster Hunter Wilds mods
Latest in Features
Monster Hunter Wilds' stockpile master studying a manifest
Monster Hunter Wilds' new gyro controls are a fantastic option for disabled and able-bodied players alike
A busy marketplace in The Bazaar.
The Bazaar could be the future of autobattlers, if it stops strangling itself to death with its own microtransactions
Marvel Rivals characters - Hulk with his hands out as if he's grabbing the camera.
Marvel Rivals' growing roster of heroes scares me, but the game's director seems sure that all is under control: 'Everything is progressing smoothly'
Rainbow Six Siege year 9 season 2 key art - two Rainbow Six Siege operators facing each other
'Siege 2 was never on the table': Rainbow Six Siege X director explains why the 10-year-old FPS doesn't need a sequel
Gallica and the protagonist from Metaphor: ReFantazio.
The best deals in the 2025 Steam Spring Sale
Hands pushing poker chips on a table
Winning $2.6 billion in this poker videogame has completely ruined fake poker for me