Quantum Conundrum is a first person puzzle-platformer from the folks over at Airtight Games, with Kim Swift of Portal fame as Creative Director over this particular title. That?s important to note, because the game certainly seems to borrow a page or two from the Portal playbook, featuring an all omnipotent narrator (voiced by Star Trek: TNG?s John de Lancie), and a heavy emphasis on room by room puzzle solving. Hell, it even features a lot of cubes to trigger switches, anthropomorphic robots going about their business, laser beams, and a number of seriously tricky jumps.
However, where Portal relied mostly on the strength of its puzzles, QC definitely leans more heavily in the platforming direction than that particular critical darling. And as you might have guessed, first person platforming isn?t always a flawless experience, which is pretty much my biggest gripe with Quantum Conundrum. There?s a few instances that?ll pop up across the numerous stages you need to complete that will seriously test your patience with the game, and despite enjoying the uniqueness of some concepts found here, I found myself damn near breaking my controller in half during more than a couple parts.
The second wing that set off my first bit of rage with the game introduced the third dimension to me, which would slow down time while activated. I came to a room which featured a massive chasm for me to cross, and to do so I had to slow down time just as various jets of furniture rocketed across the divide. By stopping time I could cross, but I had to jump between each piece of furniture, consisting mostly of ottomans, couches, and chairs. This section, at least for me, highlighted everything I hated about first person platforming, as I found myself falling to my death over, and over again just because there?s no good way to get a sense of where you?re going to land. It didn?t help that the oddly shaped pieces of furniture would often cause little hang-ups during my jump, or not give me enough leverage to jump at all, instead sliding off into oblivion. I?m of the mind that if you can pass this part and still want to play the rest of the game, you?ll not encounter a single challenge as maddening as this (other than a couch surfing section in wing 3).
But when you?re just figuring out puzzles, and especially when you?re making use of all four of the dimension types to do so, you manage to squeeze out some great feeling eureka moments that make the game worth checking out. The aforementioned couch surfing moment, which can also be infinitely frustrating, is also very cool and rewarding when it works. In fact, the last dimensional power you get, which allows you to control the gravity for various objects, allows for some really fun instances of puzzle solving and object manipulation based on momentum.
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