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dkirschner's Quantum Conundrum (XBONE)

[May 21, 2025 10:48:42 AM]

Been playing this with Patrick for most of the semester and we finally beat it last night. It's a mixed bag, but overall positive. It absolutely rides the coattails of Portal, and we read that it was directed by the lead designer on Portal, so no surprise at the similarities. I'll get the negative things out of the way first:

1. It tries to be funny, but it falls mostly flat. The funniest things were Ike (this little imp creature that makes silly faces at you) and the way that the paintings change when you use the abilities (often funny and surprising!). What was supposed to carry the game's humor--the narrator/uncle--didn't. He delivered his lines just fine, but they didn't land. Given that you play as a child, he can't be as sarcastic as GlaDOS in Portal. Given the more family-friendly aesthetic, the jokes were sillier. Given that he and the child actually don't seem to have much of a relationship, nor is it developed throughout the game, there's little relational history and context to draw from. And he usually only pipes up in between puzzles to make brief comments that don't add much.

2. The level of precision required for the first-person platforming was rough. Many puzzles require excellent timing and precision for jumping, throwing and catching objects, and so on, and the game just didn't handle that well. The movement controls are oddly both too tight and too floaty at the same time (I'm sure I'm mischaracterizing this in my description, but this is what it felt like). We OFTEN fell off flying objects, jumped too far or not far enough, missed catching things because of the camera, and so on. Actually, it was irritating for the first half of the game, and it became funny to us as the levels became more complicated. Like last night, Patrick tried for 15 minutes to execute the moves on a puzzle before handing it to me to finish. It would take 1 minute to figure out what you need to do and 14 minutes to accomplish the task. I felt bad watching Patrick sometimes because he's not great at precision controls, so he would fail and fail and fail, hand me the controller, and I'd do on the first try what he'd tried 20 times (though I certainly failed my fair share of times because of the controls!).

3. The ending was uninspired and happened quickly. I'm not entirely sure why what happened happened and I don't care. It obviously set up a sequel that never came.

That's it! Those are the negatives. The positive, though, is the puzzles. They are great, consistently fun and challenging. You're in your uncle's crazy science mansion, and there are four ways that you manipulate objects to solve puzzles by swapping to different "dimensions." First, you can make objects "heavy." Second, you can make objects "fluffy." Third, you can slow time. Fourth, you can reverse gravity. Only one dimension can be active at a time, but by choosing sequences of dimensions, you do some cool things. For example, one common object is a big safe. You normally can't pick up a safe (or other large objects), but activate the fluffy dimension and it becomes light as a feather. This way, you can move safes around to toss them through windows (throw and change to "heavy" before it hits the glass), depress buttons (place them them change to "heavy"), or fly through the air using a combination of dimensions. For example, carry the safe with fluffy, throw it and quickly slow time, jump on top of the safe you just threw, use reverse gravity to travel upward, and (voila!) you've used a safe to get to a ledge above you.

Puzzles utilize various combinations of dimensions, and often you have to find these little capsules to trigger the dimensions in the first place. So task 1 will be acquiring the capsules for dimensions in a puzzle area, then you can start solving the harder puzzles in an area. It is totally linear though, so it's not like you'll be trying puzzles you can't complete. Unlike something like The Witness, you're always at a puzzle you can solve. So if you can't figure it out, then it's you. Like Portal, there are various obstacles and death traps, including deadly pools of "science juice" (like acid), lasers, robots that push you off ledges, and so on.

I do recall getting bored and sleepy earlier on, but to be fair, we were always playing Quantum Conundrum at night after work, and I have learned that puzzle games are a genre not best suited to play while exhausted at night. Nevertheless, it held our attention, and by at least halfway through, we were thoroughly enjoying the puzzling. So, the short version is: Portal is better by far, but Quantum Conundrum scratches the itch.