So I beat Quantum Conundrum....
PostPosted:Sat Jan 19, 2013 10:14 am
Not sure if everyone knows, but this game was directed by Kim "I created Portal" Swift who left Valve and created her own company, Airtight Games. Squeenix released this one.
Basically, it's a lot like Portal in the sense that it's a first-person, room-based puzzler. The difference here is instead of using a gun to create a portal for yourself to go from one place to another, you have the ability to switch between 1 and 4 dimensions, including:
- Fluffy: makes this lighter so you can pick them up, throw them, have them affected by wind, etc.
- Heavy: makes things much heavier so they weigh more, are indestructible to lasers, etc
- Slow-Mo: things move EXCESSIVELY slowly, allowing you to run through moving lasers, jump on fast moving objects, etc
- Reverse Gravity: pretty much what it sounds like
Because you wear a glove in the game, you don't get affected by the change in dimension, just everything else. That means you can, say, move at full speed while object are moving slowly. So you can pick up a heavy object by changing to the Fluffy dimension, throw it, and immediately switch to the Slow-Mo dimension to jump on it, then switch back and forth from the Reverse Gravity dimension to basically fly across and up/down to where you need to go.
The entire time you're playin' the game you have the guy who plays Q in The Next Generation constantly narrating to you while provding "super smart nerdy Sheldon-like professor" insults and/or back-handed comments at you. Imagine a mixture between the Joker from Arkham Asylum and GlaDoS. It's generally entertaining, sometimes funny, and a welcomed addition to what would otherwise be a bland experience.
Each "section" is divided into one or more rooms and there's about 15 or so sections spread over 3 different areas. The rooms can be simple little rooms or huge elaborate ones which are connected by hallways (that's where a ton of the narration occurs). There's a good amount of content, certainly significantly more than Portal 1 but not quite as much as the sequel. I think this game took me about 6 or 7 hours total which is good for a downloadable game.
Each of the 4 dimensions is given to you over time, which is a really good thing. By the time you start getting sick of one of them, you've got a new one to add to the mix which allows for slightly more complex puzzles, especially in the few rooms you had to use all 4 dimensions to get through. I didn't end up getting the 4th dimension until at least 2/3rds of the way through the game. It was a good way of freshening up the gameplay.
The main issue with the game is it's not really hard...at all. Only one time did I get stuck for more than a couple of minutes and that was because I just missed something obvious. And, I believe in an effort to make sure it was more accessible, there really wasn't a huge variety in the gameplay. It's not about the different kinds of things you can do, there's plenty of that with the 4 dimensions. It's about how they were used. Invariably, in the last hour or two, you ended up doing pretty much the same thing to get through the rooms as, by then, they had exhausted all the uses of the gameplay they had come up with. And there was a lot of first-person jumping in those parts which we all know can be a bit frustrating. It's not that bad in this game but it's still there and didn't need to be that annoying.
It's not as if the game was designed poorly, it was still fun to play. It just felt like it "shoulda" been designed better. It deserves the 7s or so that it got, that's about right. I got it because it's free for PSN Plus users and I'm in the middle of a free month. At $15 it's expensive, even $10 is too much. $5 is about where I'd put it, it's a fine game for that price but not much more.
Basically, it's a lot like Portal in the sense that it's a first-person, room-based puzzler. The difference here is instead of using a gun to create a portal for yourself to go from one place to another, you have the ability to switch between 1 and 4 dimensions, including:
- Fluffy: makes this lighter so you can pick them up, throw them, have them affected by wind, etc.
- Heavy: makes things much heavier so they weigh more, are indestructible to lasers, etc
- Slow-Mo: things move EXCESSIVELY slowly, allowing you to run through moving lasers, jump on fast moving objects, etc
- Reverse Gravity: pretty much what it sounds like
Because you wear a glove in the game, you don't get affected by the change in dimension, just everything else. That means you can, say, move at full speed while object are moving slowly. So you can pick up a heavy object by changing to the Fluffy dimension, throw it, and immediately switch to the Slow-Mo dimension to jump on it, then switch back and forth from the Reverse Gravity dimension to basically fly across and up/down to where you need to go.
The entire time you're playin' the game you have the guy who plays Q in The Next Generation constantly narrating to you while provding "super smart nerdy Sheldon-like professor" insults and/or back-handed comments at you. Imagine a mixture between the Joker from Arkham Asylum and GlaDoS. It's generally entertaining, sometimes funny, and a welcomed addition to what would otherwise be a bland experience.
Each "section" is divided into one or more rooms and there's about 15 or so sections spread over 3 different areas. The rooms can be simple little rooms or huge elaborate ones which are connected by hallways (that's where a ton of the narration occurs). There's a good amount of content, certainly significantly more than Portal 1 but not quite as much as the sequel. I think this game took me about 6 or 7 hours total which is good for a downloadable game.
Each of the 4 dimensions is given to you over time, which is a really good thing. By the time you start getting sick of one of them, you've got a new one to add to the mix which allows for slightly more complex puzzles, especially in the few rooms you had to use all 4 dimensions to get through. I didn't end up getting the 4th dimension until at least 2/3rds of the way through the game. It was a good way of freshening up the gameplay.
The main issue with the game is it's not really hard...at all. Only one time did I get stuck for more than a couple of minutes and that was because I just missed something obvious. And, I believe in an effort to make sure it was more accessible, there really wasn't a huge variety in the gameplay. It's not about the different kinds of things you can do, there's plenty of that with the 4 dimensions. It's about how they were used. Invariably, in the last hour or two, you ended up doing pretty much the same thing to get through the rooms as, by then, they had exhausted all the uses of the gameplay they had come up with. And there was a lot of first-person jumping in those parts which we all know can be a bit frustrating. It's not that bad in this game but it's still there and didn't need to be that annoying.
It's not as if the game was designed poorly, it was still fun to play. It just felt like it "shoulda" been designed better. It deserves the 7s or so that it got, that's about right. I got it because it's free for PSN Plus users and I'm in the middle of a free month. At $15 it's expensive, even $10 is too much. $5 is about where I'd put it, it's a fine game for that price but not much more.