Quantum Break

Much has been made of Quantum Break's big gimmick a tie-in television miniseries that adapts to reflect your in-game choices so it's only fair that we touch on that first. Playable sequences will be broken up by half-hour live-action episodes that run alongside the events of the story. At key intervals, you'll be able to make decisions that branch the plot off in different directions, both in terms of gameplay and future episodes. Once you beat the game, you'll have created and watched your own personalized director's cut of the season.

But if we're being honest, that's not what has us looking forward to Quantum Break. Frankly, the Mark Hamillshaped wounds of FMV gaming and its endless broken promises are still too fresh. We're not entirely certain that a modern take on the concept, especially a pioneering one, will have the production values necessary to keep it from being horrendously cheesy.

No, what has our interest piqued is the simple fact that Max Payne creator Remedy Entertainment is making another action game with time-shifting powers. Quantum Break's sci-fi concept centered around a physics experiment gone wrong that causes the New England town of Riverport to freeze, stutter, and skip backward like a broken record plays beautifully to the strengths of the studio that gave us interactive bullet time.

Details are still a bit on the scarce side we haven't heard anything concrete about the exact abilities that will be at the disposal of dual protagonists Jack Joyce and Beth Wilder but early gameplay glimpses have been blisteringly cool, with some of the best-looking particle effects and performance-capture animation we've seen on the new consoles to date, as well as some slick-looking cover-based gunplay.

Plus, the idea of navigating through and fighting within frozen moments in time has enormous potential. Plenty of games have massive explosions, and a few like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and God of War: Ascension have experimented with fast-forwarding and rewinding scenes of destruction, but it's never been done with this much detail or in such an ambitious way.

Remedy has made it clear that we shouldn't think of these time skips as a mere puzzle mechanic, but as dynamic, unpredictable environments, where changes will have a major impact on combat and traversal.

If you ask us, that's way more exciting than watching boring old flesh-and-blood people mugging for the camera.