Genre: First-Person Puzzler
Developer: Toxic Games
Price: £11.99
If I told you that I was going to be reviewing a Puzzle Platformer based on a series of puzzles in a lonely, cold, white environment, nine out of ten of you would assume that I was going to be writing about Portal again. To be honest; I wish I was, because I could talk about GLaDOS for years without running out of things to say. Instead I have spent the day playing a mimic; a game similar in appearance and premise to portal, but with it's own mechanics and quirks to drive the player along, and which is titled Q.U.B.E, an acronym that supposedly stands for 'Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion'.
When the game begins, you find yourself waking up in a sterile white-panelled environment wearing a pair of impressive looking gloves. As you move forward you find that the gloves can be used to control coloured panels to produce different effects. The challenge of each room is to leave the room, a task that generally requires the player reaching a difficult to get to doorway, complete a task to open a door, or sometimes both simultaneously.
The puzzles are actually rather enjoyable. The basic mechanics are extremely simple, and you are encouraged to learn them through experimentation; a red cube can be elongated to the height or width of three further cubes, yellow cubes form a sort of staircase structure, with the specific block you click becoming the longest in the structure, and a blue block forms a spring, which must be reset back to a closed position after each use. The game gets an incredible amount of use of these mechanics by using them in puzzles in increasingly creative ways. Whilst a yellow block will initially form a convenient staircase, it will later be used as a rapidly-appearing platform, or to quickly nudge cubes or balls in the correct direction.
And with seven sectors, most of which use the basic coloured blocks as their primary method of puzzle solving, the game will have you racking your brain to get to the exits. Indeed, some of the puzzles are extremely difficult, whilst some of them are just brilliantly designed. A particular highlight is an entire sector of puzzles that are set in near-total darkness. The player can manipulate four switches on the wall, only one of which can be active at a time, which determine which of the blocks is illuminated and can be interacted with. Whilst these puzzles are simpler, the added challenge of near-blindness makes them far more memorable and interesting.
One of the game's biggest problems, however, is that the plot has been left as purposefully ambiguous as possible. Whilst this is often an interesting thing in games, in Q.U.B.E, it leaves the player without motivation, and only occasionally serves enough purpose to link the puzzles together. The game never answers the question of who or what you are, and whilst it eventually answers the question of where you are, the result is rather unsatisfying and only serves to bring up more questions than it answers. There is certainly a sense of progression, with the environment beginning to decay wildly around the end of the fifth sector, but it never really seems to click in the way that feels satisfying, and the ending comes off both as being abrupt and after the game has already worn out it's welcome.
There is also a problem with some of the game's latter puzzles. The moment that the game starts playing with magnets, the game becomes less enjoyable and more fiddly, as the slow stop/start reactions on the buttons that control the magnetism often makes getting blocks into the correct position a tedious task. These puzzles are some of the weakest in the game, as the previously slick and carefully tended designs give way to awkward fumbly physics that don't seem to want to play nicely.
Q.U.B.E is a game that wants to be Portal. It just wants to be Portal so incredibly much that it hurts. The fact that it's a first-person puzzler set in a strange sterile environment alone is enough to raise eyebrows, but the fact that the player is equipped with a sleek white-and-black device and the way the walls move and rearrange themselves really show where the game inspiration lies. Sadly, Q.U.B.E is not Portal; it's puzzles, whilst often clever, are never as intricate and interesting as that of it's forebear, and it's storytelling is seriously lacking. That is not to say, however, that the game isn't rather enjoyable on it's own merits, and if you play it long enough to stop thinking about how much better Portal is, you might even like it.
How long did I play? - 2.9 Hours
Did I finish it? - Yes
Would I play it again? - Possibly not, although if the supposed DLC that reinserts the cut plot and dialogue ever surfaces, I may just give it another whirl.
