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Quantum Conundrum (PS3) Status: Finished playing I started playing this game on Sunday 1 December, 2013 // I stopped playing this game on: Sunday 29 December, 2013
Current opinion of this game
It's not Portal, but it has its moments.
December 22, 2013 06:19:18 PM
Finished this last night and, well, it continued to be a mostly underwhelming experience. I feel bad as I write this because I don't feel there is anything particularly poor or bad about the game - it just didn't gel with me the way that Portal did. To be fair, this game has all the right ingredients (heck, they even added some "new things" with collectible robots and things like that). So why the "meh" face? (the ending is pretty lame, I'm not sure exactly what happened and it wasn't particularly notable, but that's another issue) 1. The game relies on some "precision" 3D platforming which is pretty hard to do well, and at times was a lot more annoying than I would have liked. There are quite a few levels I had to try, and try again (having solved the "puzzle"). In other words, there's quite a fair amount of dying over and over. 2. The locations aren't all that exciting and I never really felt motivated or curious about them. They're all pretty similar as well, so there's no real sense of "traveling" through space. I'm not sure that I could tell a room in the red wing from one in the blue wing, for examples. Things that weren't "meh"? 1. Some of the mechanics are really fun. The fluffy world and the slow motion one in particular. I thought it was REALLY cool to mess around with those and had a fair amount of "aha!" moments where I felt really clever (even if it was the only solution to a particular puzzle). In all? I think it's a game with some great mechanics and some neat puzzles but it doesn't have enough character (or the right kind of character?) to really stand out. Portal set a really high bar...
December 1, 2013 02:05:10 AM
So it's not Portal. But it definitely feels like Portal in more ways than one. There's a clear pedigree to be sure (and fair). After all, Kim Swift was lead designer on Portal (and also Portal 2?), and then went on to design this game. It's a first-person puzzler, and while the puzzles are new and different, I always come back to Portal. It set a high bar to be sure. I'm actually quite surprised by how much you can tell there's a "similar" hand. While the gameplay is quite different (this isn't really a first-person shooter - it's pretty much all puzzles, and platforming), the quirky humor, the off-screen narrator/voice that makes silly comments and the crazy mechanical/industrial elements in the environments are quite evocative of what Portal did well. That's way I'm surprised that I'm not having more fun or enjoying the game more. It definitely seems like I should. But the environments are that interesting (in fact, things get old quite quickly...) and the narrator isn't that funny either. What's strange is that, from his portraits, I imagined him having a very different voice. He doesn't sound like the crazy old scientist I had imagined him. His relation with the boy (the character you control) is also a bit strange. It's not clear whether the boy likes the old man or not, and the same goes for the old man. They're family, but they don't like each other? It's weird. I'll definitely keep on playing, but I'm not all that enthused...

Quantum Conundrum (PS3)