Full Quiet Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of Full Quiet (Xbox One)

Wednesday, July 12, 2023.
by Adam Dileva

I still remember getting my NES as a kid. Unboxing that thing is one of my favorite memories growing up. Little did I know that would be the true start of my lifelong gaming obsession, with dozens of classic games I loved and shaped my gaming preferences to this day. NES games were also known for being notoriously hard. Yes, before the Dark Souls ‘git gud’, you had games that were brutally difficult for numerous reasons.

Retrotainment Games and 8-Bit Legit have a very specific niche, as they not only create NES era inspired games, but authentic to the point that they make cartridges that work on an actual NES as well. Their latest is Full Quiet, which takes a lot of modern gaming mechanics and ideas and they’ve somehow made it work quite well on mid-80’s console hardware.

A side scrolling platformer / Metroidvania at its core, Full Quiet is a much larger experience than I initially experienced, complete with an open world to explore, somewhat reminiscent of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Keep in mind this is nowhere near the same size of team, so a NES game this massive is quite impressive for being authentic to the hardware limitations.

While the story may start off simple with you searching the woods for your lost son, it doesn’t take long for you to figure out that there’s something else going on here. The forest is huge so you’ll need to follow clues left behind by family and friends, so make sure to brush up on your Morse Code. Radio signals and towers are down, so to find the next clue and area you’ll need to repair them as you come across each.

That wouldn’t be too challenging if it wasn’t for all the monsters roaming around, so it’s a good thing you have your gun with unlimited ammo to fight back, just make sure you don’t go out after dark. Thankfully your ammo is unlimited, because enemies can respawn if you go ‘out’ of the screen. Not quite as harsh as Mega Man handles its enemies, but if you return out of a puzzle or back into an area from another screen, all the enemies will be waiting for you once more.

You can expect plenty of platforming cliff sides, caves, ladders and ropes, firing your weaponry at deadly monsters, solving puzzles, dealing with an actual day and night cycle and managing your resources. Again, keep in mind this is all on a classic NES title, which is even more impressive. I thought it may have been a little too much of an overreach to have all these mechanics included, but they work well together for a cohesive experience.

As you explore each area, the map will get filled out to note that you’ve been there before, which is where the Metroidvania elements come in. You can expect a healthy amount of backtracking, more so until you figure out how the navigating and map actually works. While it’s a side scrolling adventure, you need to pay attention of what direction the screen says you’re moving. Even though the majority of the time you’re moving left to right, or vice versa, those don’t always only mean East or West, sometimes North or South once you’ve taken a path or down a tunnel. Once you realize walking right isn’t simply East, you’ll figure out the map system in no time and how to backtrack to your safe house cabins.

True to the era as well, you’re given basically no direction, no tutorial or anything of the sort. You’re simply thrown into this world after the opening cutscene and left to your own devices to figure everything out. I wouldn’t have been opposed to at least a little bit of direction, especially when it comes to the puzzles. Did you enjoy the pipe puzzles from Bioshock? Then you’re going to have a blast in Full Quiet as it’s very similar, tasking you with reaching the start to finish on a grid with tiles, though I initially wasn’t able to figure out why I was losing health when I failed after a short period of time. These puzzles are timed, which would have been nice to know beforehand. Also, once you figure out that you can simply place tiles down on top of one another until you get the one you want, it saves you a ton of time.

The world doesn’t seem too vast at first, as you’ll eventually loop back to where you started after finding a blocked pathway, but power up the generator by flipping a switch then do a puzzle to unlock the first cabin, your safe house, and you’ll then unlock more areas to explore. There’s multiple areas, and each has a large interconnected map that will needed to be explored to find all of its secrets and even better weapon upgrades if you’re keen enough.

You do have a stamina meter to manage, as you can roll and dodge, but need a quick second before it recharges. This will be helpful as you have a moment of invulnerability when rolling, so you’ll need to use it to your advantage to avoid getting hit by unattackable enemies.

Do make sure to remember where your camps are. The cabins are a safe house and where you’ll want to get before nightfall if you want to avoid even more hellish enemies. Having a Day/Night cycle is quite impressive, as does the game changing in certain ways if you decide to venture out when you probably shouldn’t. These cabins are where you can rest until morning and also save your game, so to say they are a necessity is an understatement. This is where a lot of the backtracking comes in though, as you might have to run quite a lengthy way to get back for a save when you can’t figure out where to go next before dark.

Remember, the NES only had the D-Pad, Start, Select and 2 buttons, A and B. Even though our controllers now have many more, Full Quiet utilizes the two button setup. This again would have been a great thing to explain, that when I’m in the map menu I can move to other tabs. I was collecting health refills but had no idea how to use them for the longest time until I accidently figured out how to get to my inventory screen. There is a help screen that has some handwritten notes and sections you’ll want to study, especially the Morse Code portion, but getting to this isn’t an intuitive as it should be either.

For a classic NES game restricted to the same original hardware, Full Quiet looks fantastic for a game that appears to be from the era. There’s plenty of animations, color and everything you need to interact with is obvious at a glance. Some platforms can be tricky to tell if they are ledges or not, but overall the aesthetic is done quite well. The star though is the catchy soundtrack and tunes composed entirely in Famitracker that I definitely bopped my head to. There’s a few moments of silence which is a little jarring, but that’s forgotten once the next killer track kicks in.

It takes a little time for Full Quiet to really show how expansive it is for a classic NES game with the same technical limitations. Full of modern day mechanics but de-made into a full functioning and entertaining NES title is nothing short of impressive. Retrotainment Games and 8-Bit Legit have once again made a retro 8-Bit game that I wish I had growing up as a kid with my NES.

**Full Quiet was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 8.3 / 10
Gameplay: 8.0 / 10
Visuals: 8.0 / 10
Sound: 9.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Full Quiet (Xbox One)

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