This game was one of those random purchases of mine... I never did get the game to function properly with Quicktime and Windows95, so one day I just sat down and watched all the video clips. I have to say that it is frustrating to just say "it's great" or "it stinks."
The video is poor quality. With the exception of the memory flashbacks from the main character's past (that would be you, Drew Griffin), all the video's are filmed against poorly realized bluescreen backgrounds. The actors abilities vary from terrible (Drew's voice actor only seems to portray the correct amount of emotion or depth at very rare moments), to very realistic and well done (Paige Witte's Jenny).
I felt that the game obstructed what may have otherwise made a great book, film or TV movie. The story is original, the concepts new and interesting and the characters (some of them) well developed in the short time made available by low- fi video clips.
There really is a complete lack of interactivity in this game, so it just makes it all the more frustrating that there is the tease of having any affect on the outcome.
I would like to see this turned into a proper book or film. In the mean time, I think I will search for the sequel (many years too late for me to locate it, I bet) and see if there are any more answers to be had in that than there were at the end of this cryptic (though not as annoyingly as it could have been) story.
With higher quality video, audio, directing and, in some cases, acting, this could have been a wonderful film. I must make special notice of the terrible audio quality (which could have been avoided by professional recording and some general care) and the voice actor who plays Drew Griffon. Several scenes are ruined by the voice actor's lack of realism. While pulling me out of the fantasy experience, he also made me feel like my player character was an idiot. No note is made to say who this actor was, but he was the weakest link in the game; an element as important as the protagonist should have been voiced professionally. The poor directing and voice acting had the effect of dragging down the rest.
!SPOILER WARNING - SPOILERS BELOW THIS LINE!
If you have not been able to "win" this game, let me tell you now that there isn't any way to do so. This game was apparently a misguided attempt at independent film-making and therefore the tradgedy of this tale is not escapable. It is a one -way tale. Drew, once a promising medical student, has run away from his family and a loving girlfriend/wife because of his inability to face the hardships that befell them (his father dead and gone, sister unavailable due to her work, Drew's last straw was when an apparently a near-fatal accident left Jenny horribly disfigured).
True to the artistic feel of this story-driven, um, game, Quantum Gate does not approve of people who run away from their lives. Drew suffers the consequences in the end and he knows there is a universal form of karma at work.
What was really happening? Were the soldiers, of which Drew was one, warring against mindless savage insects to protect a mining project (mining for a mineral that had the potential to save Earth's dying environment), or were the soldiers mere pawns, being used to blindly wipe out the primitive human-like inhabitants of an alien world that Earth saw fit for colonization? The game never reveals this, and I feel that it never intended to. Stories like this are told to make you think about life, right, wrong, yourself, etc. The perfect story NOT to make into a non-interactive interactive-movie-computer-game thing.
Is this game worth playing? No. Is the story worth watching? Yes. Is it possible to do one without the other... well... sort of... by browsing through the quicktime movies on the CD-ROM, but that shatters the proper chronological order that the game set out to portray. Is it worth the time? Only if you are a lover of failed yet interesting films/games/whatevers like me. With all due respect to Greg Roach, the creator of Quantum Gate, this was a terrible game but a great story.
The video is poor quality. With the exception of the memory flashbacks from the main character's past (that would be you, Drew Griffin), all the video's are filmed against poorly realized bluescreen backgrounds. The actors abilities vary from terrible (Drew's voice actor only seems to portray the correct amount of emotion or depth at very rare moments), to very realistic and well done (Paige Witte's Jenny).
I felt that the game obstructed what may have otherwise made a great book, film or TV movie. The story is original, the concepts new and interesting and the characters (some of them) well developed in the short time made available by low- fi video clips.
There really is a complete lack of interactivity in this game, so it just makes it all the more frustrating that there is the tease of having any affect on the outcome.
I would like to see this turned into a proper book or film. In the mean time, I think I will search for the sequel (many years too late for me to locate it, I bet) and see if there are any more answers to be had in that than there were at the end of this cryptic (though not as annoyingly as it could have been) story.
With higher quality video, audio, directing and, in some cases, acting, this could have been a wonderful film. I must make special notice of the terrible audio quality (which could have been avoided by professional recording and some general care) and the voice actor who plays Drew Griffon. Several scenes are ruined by the voice actor's lack of realism. While pulling me out of the fantasy experience, he also made me feel like my player character was an idiot. No note is made to say who this actor was, but he was the weakest link in the game; an element as important as the protagonist should have been voiced professionally. The poor directing and voice acting had the effect of dragging down the rest.
!SPOILER WARNING - SPOILERS BELOW THIS LINE!
If you have not been able to "win" this game, let me tell you now that there isn't any way to do so. This game was apparently a misguided attempt at independent film-making and therefore the tradgedy of this tale is not escapable. It is a one -way tale. Drew, once a promising medical student, has run away from his family and a loving girlfriend/wife because of his inability to face the hardships that befell them (his father dead and gone, sister unavailable due to her work, Drew's last straw was when an apparently a near-fatal accident left Jenny horribly disfigured).
True to the artistic feel of this story-driven, um, game, Quantum Gate does not approve of people who run away from their lives. Drew suffers the consequences in the end and he knows there is a universal form of karma at work.
What was really happening? Were the soldiers, of which Drew was one, warring against mindless savage insects to protect a mining project (mining for a mineral that had the potential to save Earth's dying environment), or were the soldiers mere pawns, being used to blindly wipe out the primitive human-like inhabitants of an alien world that Earth saw fit for colonization? The game never reveals this, and I feel that it never intended to. Stories like this are told to make you think about life, right, wrong, yourself, etc. The perfect story NOT to make into a non-interactive interactive-movie-computer-game thing.
Is this game worth playing? No. Is the story worth watching? Yes. Is it possible to do one without the other... well... sort of... by browsing through the quicktime movies on the CD-ROM, but that shatters the proper chronological order that the game set out to portray. Is it worth the time? Only if you are a lover of failed yet interesting films/games/whatevers like me. With all due respect to Greg Roach, the creator of Quantum Gate, this was a terrible game but a great story.
