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The interactive movie – that nebulous, hard-to-define kind of fashionable in the mid-1990s, when CD-ROM technology made it possible for developers to integrate live-action footage into games – is not exactly remembered for its high quality . But even in the tradition responsible for such notorious follies as Night Trap, Sewer Shark, and Who Shot Johnny Rock, The Quiet Man is astonishingly saying – a graceless, outdated game that belongs squarely in the era of laserdiscs and the Philips CD-i . When it is not an interactive movie, it's a simple 3D beat-em-up of the ubiquitous kind ounce at arcades. Aimed at the interest of the past, the reality of the game, and its ideas are poorly realized.
The Quiet Man boasts a formal design that is at least moderately interesting. You play as a slender blonde 20-something named Dane, who is deaf, and as a consequence the game is almost totally silent. You hear only the muffled patter of footfalls while walking, some indistinct notes of synthesizer to represent voices, and a faint patina of generic ambience elsewhere. The marketing materials describe this as an effort to allow the player to "experience the world in the way Dane does." But we do not experience the world as Dane does. Dane reads lips; he communicates extensively and effortlessly with every character he encounters. So why are these conversations not subtitled? In one lengthy scene of dialogue after another, people talk with Dane, presumably advancing the story. Meanwhile, we have no earthly clue what's being said or what's going on.
This spell of inexplicable design is entirely typical of the Quiet Man. It's hard to understand so much of what transpires. Consider an early narrative sequence in which Dane meets a colleague – the relationship is more likely to be confused over the course of the story – and converses with him in his office. Dane nods along, rapt; The nature of their discussion is opaque, and their performances, amateurish and hammy, are abysmal. You can imagine this scene being staged in such a way that the content would be clear. The Quiet Man does not even try.
When these mystifying, endless full-motion-video scenes at last end, the actors are switched for crudely animated substitutions, many of whom bear such a poor resemblance to their real-life counterparts that it is frequently unclear who's who. It's never hard to pick Dane in the heat of battle, though, because he's the only one who's white. The endless procession of villainous henchmen are constantly being dispatched, with the broad caricatures of "cholos" in street-gang garb who sneer at you between pummelings. You fight them pretty much all over. The political implications of the game's demographic makeup are appalling, in this case of wall-building especially, and the result is plainly, unforgivably racist.
In any case, it is quite fitting for the same cliched type repeated ad nauseam, because it is the very nature of the Quiet Man's beat-em-up combat system. Brawling has what might be an arcade-like simplicity: one button to punch, one to kick, and one to dodge, plus a finishing move that can be triggered on occasion. It would be more accurate to call this rudimentary. Almost every battle boils down to a dull frenzy of button-mashing, you've never seen it before, and you've never seen it before. But waves of 10 or even 20 must be defeated to a given room, they do not change their approach or vary their style, and they generally seem to be expected to turn their vanquished. There's no way to vary your own attacks,
Boss battles are not much different in terms of technical character. They are in the process of being overwhelmed. I almost never lost a fight in the race of regular gameplay; each of the handful of boss battles, though, kept me stuck for a long time, as I labored through dust-ups with enemies that seemed absurdly overpowered and virtually invulnerable to damage. Worse than simply losing these battles was always vague they proved to be. Seldom is it apparent why you might be losing a fight. The game does not track damage, it's never been so bad, and it's never been so bad. and outrageously imprecise.
Simplistic, ungainly fight is the most surprising given that it is the Quiet Man's only mechanic gameplay. From beginning to end there is nothing else to do – no places to navigate, no items to collect, no weapons to wield, no puzzles to solve. It's just those same mind-numbing punches and kicks broken up by extended narrative scenes that by virtue of the enforced silence you can not hope to follow or understand. The broad contours of the plot are vaguely discernible: the drama involves trauma, seedy metropolitan underbelly, various acts of conspiracy and revenge. As for the details, it's impossible to say. The game's final moments tease an upcoming addition that will allow you to play a second time with the sound restored. This is a preposterous cop-out – that's the hand conceits! – and a cruel punishment. With sound the story will surely make more sense. But having fallen victim to The Quiet Man once, I can not bear to try it again.
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