Quantum Replica is a stealth based action game. This is a niche game that wasn't for me.

The game recommends playing with a controller, but in my opinion it wasn't thoroughly tested with a wide range of controllers as the mapping on the Steam Controller is so unintuitive I was still struggling to remember the button combinations despite hobbling all the way to level three.

Stealth gameplay is a simple zone-based mechanic with each enemy having a short cone to reflect their vision. This game does suffer from the forgetful enemy syndrome that most stealth games face. In that aspect it's quite forgiving, but stages are often littered with enemies and due to poor mapping of controls, most distraction creating items are unusable as you have to take time to aim it and your range is both awful and can be obstructed by the setting.

Quantum Replica's most interesting mechanic is the AI's ability to respawn enemies when a corpse is found. I liked this feature as it forced me to be more thorough about hiding bodies after performing stealth takedowns. It does prevent a guns blazing play-style though as guards will respawn nearby corpses before you can kill them, often creating loops of guards that will eventually take you down.

The poor mapping of controls on the Steam Controller ruined the game for me however. Targeting is mapped to a trigger button, running is mapped to a bumper button and shooting is mapped to A unless your not aiming and then it's the heal button. There's no remapping option and so I was stuck with awful shooting controls and the game offers no auto-targeting. This made even the first boss super difficult. Sure I could go remapping it on the OS level, but I'd rather just not play the game further.