” I had to team kill myself to stop myself from team killing myself.”
“Now I know what a bad teammate I am.”
“My shoulders are aching from carrying myself for the past hour.”
These are some of the Steam reviews for the newly released team-based multiplayer FPS, Quantum League. But wait, I see your face twitching – signs of visible confusion. Ah! You must be wondering why the above reviews make it seem like the players have been playing with themselves in a team-based online shooter. Is it because they are so good that they are ignoring their teammates? Or is it because their teammates are as skilled/unskilled as them? What if, in the rarest of possibilities, in the wildest of imaginations, they are playing with their own clones (no not bots), only the clones are following the same actions they did a while ago? Mind-boggling, confusing, isn’t it? For the first few seconds, maybe, but the way Quantum League delivers this concept, it will make you wonder why the industry took so long to turn CLOCKBLOCKERS into a videogame.
I am my best friend, and my worst enemy
In a future where time manipulation devices have changed the scenario of global entertainment, a new form of weaponized sport emerges which, even though is team-based, can deliver the required action with just two players. How? By making them fight alongside their past selves to dominate a circle in the middle of the arena King-of-the-Hill style. Quantum League features specially designed arenas with time loops within which you must do your thing, be it spam the landscape with grenades, tactically position yourself on the arena or just sacrifice yourself to know the enemy position. Because once the time loop resets and a new loop begins, a clone will be spawned which will carry out all the actions you performed in the previous loop. You spammed grenades in Loop #1 without killing anyone, now watch as the enemy accidentally sprints into those areas only to die in an explosion. You positioned yourself tactically, now watch as the enemy is lured by your past self from Loop #1 while you ambush him in Loop #2.
And so there are three such time loops after which a cycle ends, while your mandate is to take control of the circle by the end of the third loop by placing at least one of your clones on it (remember even if you had placed your past self in previous loops, they can be killed in succeeding loops). But there’s a catch. In Quantum League, death is not necessarily permanent and you can legit ‘die’ twice because of this innovative mechanism called ‘Desync’ (now don’t get flashbacks from Assassin’s Creed).
Let me tell you how that works. After you get killed in a loop, you don’t die, you only get ‘desynced’ from the timeline. So you’ll still be playing for a while before the loop resets. Now in the next loop if you are able to kill the guy who shot you in the previous loop, your past self won’t die thus creating a time paradox. In this scenario your past self survives and performs all those actions you did in the previous loop… allowing the enemy to kill your sorry arse again if you are unable to make split-second decisions and plan tactics on-the-fly.
Things can get nasty when you get killed by your own bullets from the previous loop. For example, let’s say you emptied your SMG’s clip into the circle knowing that whoever goes inside in the succeeding loop, is going to get desynced. If that ‘whoever’ happens to be you, well, you lost your chance of capturing it and the only way to reset is by killing your past self from Loop #1 in Loop #3. Remembrance and foresight are major factors in Quantum League. You need to remember who shot you from where and use that to your advantage to predict where the enemy will walk into next. This also works in stealing health packs. If you walk over the health packs after getting desynced, you create a paradox as your health will replenish kicking you back into the timeline. But if the enemy steals the health pack before you in the next loop, there won’t be any paradox i.e. your clone from the previous loop will die.
Guns, modes, and maps
Maybe because of its Early Access build, Quantum League features only five gun types – Sniper Rifle, SMG, Grenade Launcher, Shotgun, and Laser Beam. But they are enough to cater to different playstyles. For example, I found players who were so good with the rifle that they would headshot me even before the circle came within my sights. Some try to predict their opponents pattern and launch grenades onto walls so that it rebounds in their preferred trajectory. Some sprint and slide as soon as they spawn and try to kill with the SMG and the shotgun. However, rarely did I find anyone using the Laser Beam maybe because of its low damage and long reload time. Also, it would be better if we could purchase upgrades for our weapons from the cash we earn after a match, like say a scope, an extended mag or futuristic stock to reduce recoil (the SMG needs that). But for the time being, the only thing we can purchase are character skins. (Remember Naked Snake’s quote from Metal Gear Solid 3, “Engravings give you no tactical advantage whatsoever.”)
Currently, Quantum League supports 1 vs 1 and 2 vs 2 matches, and it’s chaotic as hell in 2 vs 2 when tons of time-clones are running around wearing the same character skin (which is fun!). 1 vs 1 (both Custom and Ranked ) has two maps whereas 2 vs 2 has only one, which, in my opinion, is a… liiiiitle bigger considering you have to capture the circle within 15 seconds while avoiding enemy fire. As for the 1 vs 1, both the maps are well-balanced, however, the devs should make both the maps available in Custom matches as there is only one. Apart from that (and bless those who are maintaining Quantum League’s servers), the matchmaking doesn’t take much time; the maximum I had to wait was 2 minutes. Also, there is no scoreboard after a match and hence no more toxic bragging rights for anyone to show off their K/D/A ratio and pawn lowly noobs like me.
Final Impression
I still can’t believe how on-point Quantum League is for an Early Access online shooter. For starters, I can have the fun of team-based competitive shooting without any teammates. Now imagine when new game modes like say, Capture the Flag or the one where you pick up random guns to survive the end of the cycle, comes out. The possibilities are endless, and so would be the future updates. Even though the graphics are a bit low poly like Paladins or Dauntless, that’s not a major issue for the game. To increase the difficulty the devs could add recoil to the Shotgun as currently only the Rifle and the SMG feel like they have recoil, but that’s up to them as in how realistic they want the guns to be. All in all, I just can’t wait for the full release!