The Quiet Man Review
Platforms: PS4 (reviewed), PC
Developer: Human Head Studios
Release Date: Nov. 1, 2018
Reviewed by: John Phipps (@mistermegative)
Every generation of gaming from the 1980s to the present has a smattering of titles considered among the worst ever. I’m not talking about games that need simple patches or games that at least attempt to be more than the sum of their parts. I’m talking about games so bad the electricity in your home might refuse to cooperate. E.T. Night Trap. Bubsy. Superman 64. Daikatana. Big Rigs. Ride to Hell. If you know anything about this industry, you’ve heard about or (if you’re horribly unlucky) played those infamous monstrosities.
Well, now I’VE played The Quiet Man, developed by Human Head Studios. By developed, I mean summoned from the hoary caverns of Yah’l Goh-ta B’Shteen M’eh. And I can confidently report it’s the gaming equivalent of putting your tongue on a hot stove and then recording your agonized screams. The Quiet Man is 80% live action cutscenes, 20% shitty gameplay with characters being animated by the centipedes that fill their corpses, and 100% a plot by Republicans to make you fucking hate video games.
Let’s dive into the story first: in The Quiet Man you play a very quiet man named Dane. I think he’s upset about seeing a shoe heist gone wrong when he was a kid and he’s in love with his immortal mother.
Yuuup. That’s pretty much all I can tell you about the plot, because that’s all I was able to glean. You see, Dane is deaf, which is interesting! Even though he can’t hear anything the other characters are saying, he can read lips. This is apparent at the very beginning of the game when he buys something at a hot dog vendor and context is provided through subtitles. Should be no problem! But then, inexplicably, the subtitles vanish for the rest of the game and you’re left to try and make sense of what’s happening without any assistance whatsoever. With that in mind, here’s what I think unfolds over the game’s three-hours too long course:
-Sad boy and his mom are walking, see a shoe robbery.
-Mom gets shot (HER DRESS HAS NO GODDAMN BULLETHOLE!!!).
-Sad boy grows up to be Death Cab for Cutie: The Human Being (he’s so sad).
-Sad man beats up the same three criminals over and over.
-Sad man is in love with his mom who is some sort of deathless construct (?).
-Sad man chased by a guy in a crow mask.
-Sad man gets ghost powers, fights his abusive dad to determine who bangs his mom (?).
That’s about all I was able to comprehend due to the absolute lack of anything resembling a coherent story. I’ve seen week-old dog turds with more context and nuance. I’ve eaten plain baked potatoes with more narrative flavor. In one gripping scene, Dane and his friend (?) sit down to talk and drink.
For six fucking minutes.
With zero sound. No subtitles. No context. No gameplay. Just six minutes of two men sitting down in absolute, crushing silence. Six minutes may not sound like much, but when you’re playing a videogame, waiting for something, God please, fucking anything at all to happen, it’s an eternity of darkness and silence. And it happens over. And over. And over.
I mentioned his mother earlier. Well, the woman adult Dane is pursuing (wooing? Saving? I don’t even know) throughout the game is played by the exact same woman who played his mom, and there’s palpable sexual electricity crackling between them, a fierce and passionate rush of romantic energy and feeling that trancends…..who am I kidding? Without context it just seems like his mom is a vampire/lich/clone/time traveler and he wants to bang her and it’s your own fucking fault I think that, Human Head.
And the gameplay! This is also a beat ’em up after all, and Dane’s quest to make out with his momwife leads him through numerous, brief encounters with the same three gangsters for the entire game, all of whom are dressed like walking Mountain Dew cans. Combat involves mashing the square button over and over to punch. There’s a dodge, but I only used it because it looks like Dane is dancing, which is dope when you’re in a fight.
It’s completely unnecessary; most enemies in the Quiet Man are happy to simply stand there as you beat on their friends and wait for their own ass-kicking. Which is a relief, because controlling Dane is exactly what would happen if Sony made a Dualshock 4 out of peanut butter and broken hearts. The few times you die you’re treated to your momwife looking down at you winking/smiling/making kissy faces/scrunching her nose and I promise it will make you want to just stay deader than Dane’s lifeless, salmon-in-the-seafood-section eyes.
The handful of boss fights are absolutely hilarious, broken affairs that impress the player with just how fucking excruciatingly awful they can be. What do I mean by that? One boss fight against Crow Guy involves you walking around him in sad, mournful circles while he punches at thin air and points a baton with a flashlight at where you were ten seconds prior to try and blind you. Another boss runs around a room at you like he’s carrying two duffel bags filled with bricks and is completely invulnerable to punches until he randomly isn’t. I’m not making that up; sometimes my punches would phase through his chest, and sometimes they’d mysteriously connect for no discernible reason. It seemed like a combination of luck and absolutely nothing, and I am still completely fucking confused as to how I actually won.
Let’s not forget the rampant, insane racism in the game either. Dane is a sad white guy walking around like The Terminator (really, watch him walk) beating up some of the most ridiculous chariactures of Latino men you’ve ever seen. Have a look and see for yourself. Imagine every single stereotype you’ve seen about Latino men being blended into a fine, smooth paste and then poured into a man-shaped mold and brought to life with necromancy. 95% of the enemies you mindlessly beat up in this disaster are brown or black men, and it’s absolutely fucking mind-blowing. Just wait til they roll up in their gang car that looks like a goddamn Monster Energy drink can converted into a pimped-out G-ride. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so out of touch.
There was an opportunity for Human Head to do something really amazing here. People with disabilities or other afflictions such as mental illness are rarely depicted well in this medium. Ninja Theory was able to do something incredible in Hellblade for how mental illness is approached in gaming by addressing the topic with research, care, and empathy. I was so hoping Human Head would do something similar for deaf individuals here. After all, we’ve proven you don’t need spoken words to convey powerful emotions or tell a personal story full of loss and melancholy. Just look at Journey, Inside, or Limbo for some amazing examples. But The Quiet Man is just happy to shit all over disabled people with insufferable artistic choices, garbage gameplay, and racism so overt and casual you’ll be convinced the game was funded by Congressman Steve King.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Quiet Man. One of the absolute worst games ever made.
