'Quantum Break' looks relentlessly surreal

I've never taken as many screenshots of an Xbox One game as I have Quantum Break. When I wasn't preoccupied with slowing down the flow of time to outrun enemies who wanted to murder me or to stop a 60-foot tall section of scaffolding from squashing me like a grape, I was tweaking the in-game camera to frame the scenes of chaos around me. The aesthetic Developer Remedy Entertainment used for its latest is captivating, blending elements of surrealist art, cinema and even lo-fi photography into a look that's unlike anything I've seen before.

It's too bad that the game lacks a proper photo mode, because as the narrative progresses and the space-time continuum starts destroying itself, Quantum Break ratchets the surreal factor to the extreme.

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The time machine

One of the most unique aspects of Quantum Break is that it freezes time at moments of absolute chaos and lets you walk around them freely. Everything is trapped in still-frame, sort of like when a dream starts breaking down in director Christopher Nolan's Inception, with books, bodies and particles trapped in mid air. Coolest of all? If you bump into something, it'll react and move accordingly.