Quantum Conundrum Review

Bat Vader

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I have been keeping my eye on this game ever since I first heard about it, I plan on picking it up when I get paid.
 

Blood Brain Barrier

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I didn't think much of it at first but it's growing on me. And oddly enough I thought very much of de Lancie at the beginning, being a big Q fan, but later realised he was too much of a narrator and not enough of a character, unlike Glados.
 

lord.jeff

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I'm okay with the game being similar to Portal I loved portal and I have no problem with a developer sticking to what they know especially sense it's only there second game and first as Airtight studios so they wanted to play it safe, hopefully they be more willing to take risks on there next project or we'll just get a bunch more funny puzzle games which is still a win.
 

Worgen

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Andy of Comix Inc said:
Why does every review read the same? "Comparisons to Portal blahblahblah let's get it over with blahblahblah".

Can you assume that people have figured that out and just... move on? I mean Portal wasn't the first funny test-based puzzle game and it won't be the last by a long shot. Is it because it's a Kim Swift game? Why not mention Dark Void, then? Yeah whatever I dunno, I just feel like every reviewer has to make the same qualifying statement in their opening paragraph. It's a shame cos just one reviewer has to say "MAN QUANTUM CONUNDRUM SURE HAS A SILLY TITLE, EH" and all of a sudden they're King Genius of Originality Hills.
It was much more annoying with Darksiders, everyone kept saying it was a partial god of war clone despite them having nothing in common aside from finishers, its how people refer to games, always by the last really popular one that plays similar to it.
 

peruvianskys

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I'm really enjoying it. I think that the general feel is very different from Portal. QQ has a much more laid-back, silly vibe instead of the more hectice, outright funny style of Portal (and even more so Portal 2).

For 15 bucks it's impossible not to recommend.
 

Andy of Comix Inc

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Worgen said:
Andy of Comix Inc said:
Why does every review read the same? "Comparisons to Portal blahblahblah let's get it over with blahblahblah".

Can you assume that people have figured that out and just... move on? I mean Portal wasn't the first funny test-based puzzle game and it won't be the last by a long shot. Is it because it's a Kim Swift game? Why not mention Dark Void, then? Yeah whatever I dunno, I just feel like every reviewer has to make the same qualifying statement in their opening paragraph. It's a shame cos just one reviewer has to say "MAN QUANTUM CONUNDRUM SURE HAS A SILLY TITLE, EH" and all of a sudden they're King Genius of Originality Hills.
It was much more annoying with Darksiders, everyone kept saying it was a partial god of war clone despite them having nothing in common aside from finishers, its how people refer to games, always by the last really popular one that plays similar to it.
I thought Darksiders was compared to Legend of Zelda.

It's referred to colloquially as DarkZeldas...
 

Worgen

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Andy of Comix Inc said:
Worgen said:
Andy of Comix Inc said:
Why does every review read the same? "Comparisons to Portal blahblahblah let's get it over with blahblahblah".

Can you assume that people have figured that out and just... move on? I mean Portal wasn't the first funny test-based puzzle game and it won't be the last by a long shot. Is it because it's a Kim Swift game? Why not mention Dark Void, then? Yeah whatever I dunno, I just feel like every reviewer has to make the same qualifying statement in their opening paragraph. It's a shame cos just one reviewer has to say "MAN QUANTUM CONUNDRUM SURE HAS A SILLY TITLE, EH" and all of a sudden they're King Genius of Originality Hills.
It was much more annoying with Darksiders, everyone kept saying it was a partial god of war clone despite them having nothing in common aside from finishers, its how people refer to games, always by the last really popular one that plays similar to it.
I thought Darksiders was compared to Legend of Zelda.

It's referred to colloquially as DarkZeldas...
The zelda comparison makes allot of sense but I saw more then a few people calling it a god of war clone.
 

Andy of Comix Inc

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Worgen said:
Andy of Comix Inc said:
I thought Darksiders was compared to Legend of Zelda.

It's referred to colloquially as DarkZeldas...
The zelda comparison makes allot of sense but I saw more then a few people calling it a god of war clone.
Eh, it's kind of the way reviews have to work I guess. You have one week to review a game that launches in a week, so most reviewers actually don't do any digging and just play on the surface of a game. I mean, how many reviewers actually finish what they review, do you think? It's easy to say "oh yeah um hack and slash game! GOD OF WAR CLONE," and from there stems my distaste for it.

It's easy.

GAME REVIEWING SHOULD NOT BE EASY! Exercising personal, critical evaluation should rack your brain and putting it down in words should be excruciating! If every review reads the same it either means the game plays the same for everybody - and that says something about the game - or everyone is reading each others' reviews, and that says something about the reviewers. If it weren't for reviews as a marketing tool, game reviews could be really in-depth and unique, thus why I like retrospectives so much. But nope, everything has to be to-the-minute and up-to-date, and while certainly it makes a bit of sense, reviews come off as worse for it.

But that's just complaining for the sake of complaining.
 

Cenzton

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Couple of things to note:

1) It's immensely satisfying game in the sense that when, after studying a puzzle for quite a few minutes and being hopelessly lost, you finally have the epiphany moment where it suddenly all becomes clear, quite often with the "I can do that? I can do that!" phrase tossed in.

and

2) For the $15 or $20 price, it's totally worth it.
 

Pedro The Hutt

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Moonlight Butterfly said:
Pedro The Hutt said:
From what I've seen in between reviews and impressions videos, I'm not sure if I'd get it right now.

The game flipflops between not holding your hand at all and then holding it too much, while being patronising about it at the same time. It also regularly takes your toys away again and consistently chooses for you which toys you can use. Thus limiting creative alternative solutions to the puzzles. It'd be almost like in Portal suddenly being reduced back to the blue-only portal gun just because the game said so. Or in Co-Op only allowing one of the two robots to place portals for a certain chamber.

I get the feeling Kim Swift kind of overestimated her importance on the Portal project and was a bit too confident that she could equal its brilliance without needing Valve's help (while at the same time regularly taking cues from said game). There is no I in "Team" and Quantum Conundrum stands testament to it.
I like that about it, some solutions would be way too easy with all four dimensions.
While true, I can't help but feel they could've just ramped up the complexity of the puzzles so that towards the end you will have to constantly juggle all four dimensions to get where you need to be. Kind of like how (especially) in (the original) Portal the latter stages have you applying every lesson you learned on the way there. But that's just my opinion of course.
 

Mike Kayatta

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Andy of Comix Inc said:
Worgen said:
Andy of Comix Inc said:
I thought Darksiders was compared to Legend of Zelda.

It's referred to colloquially as DarkZeldas...
The zelda comparison makes allot of sense but I saw more then a few people calling it a god of war clone.
Eh, it's kind of the way reviews have to work I guess. You have one week to review a game that launches in a week, so most reviewers actually don't do any digging and just play on the surface of a game. I mean, how many reviewers actually finish what they review, do you think? It's easy to say "oh yeah um hack and slash game! GOD OF WAR CLONE," and from there stems my distaste for it.

It's easy.

GAME REVIEWING SHOULD NOT BE EASY! Exercising personal, critical evaluation should rack your brain and putting it down in words should be excruciating! If every review reads the same it either means the game plays the same for everybody - and that says something about the game - or everyone is reading each others' reviews, and that says something about the reviewers. If it weren't for reviews as a marketing tool, game reviews could be really in-depth and unique, thus why I like retrospectives so much. But nope, everything has to be to-the-minute and up-to-date, and while certainly it makes a bit of sense, reviews come off as worse for it.

But that's just complaining for the sake of complaining.
So, a few points. Firstly, speaking as someone who reviews games, it's not really fair to imply (or otherwise blatantly state) that it's easy. If multiple reviews read the same to you, it's because the reviewers are looking at the same product. Because of that, many of our observations will be shared. If two people look at the same green bird, chances are that both will, at some point, discuss the color green before moving on.

This phenomenon occurs because not everyone reading the eventual review has even heard of the game being addressed, and even fewer have actually played it. For this reason, certain common context needs to be given before analysis. Sometimes this comes through rote explanation, other times by analog. That's not to say, however, that reviews actually stop there. Easily 95% of what's actually written above has nothing to do with direct comparison to another game.

The real reason I felt the need to respond here, though, was this statement: "If it weren't for reviews as a marketing tool, game reviews could be really in-depth and unique ... " I can't disagree that good reviews could have some peripheral benefit for game developers. After all, they're a hyper-focused form of word-of-mouth recommendation, so if a developer made a great game, they get rewarded by people saying so in public forums. Sounds fair to me. Your comment, however, implies we are somehow linked into that process, which we aren't.

The only way that the marketing benefit would somehow prevent any of us from being "in-depth and unique" is if we gained from that consequence ... which we most certainly do not. We do our best to express ourselves with but one solitary concern: communicating, to you, the experience you'll likely have when playing.
 

Andy of Comix Inc

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Mike Kayatta said:
professional reviewer SNIP
Thanks for responding! Always nice to get a reply from someone who knows what they're saying.... cos I feel like I'm learning stuff. Yay!

I guess my "big" problem is that games are still reviewed like movies are, when they deserve a little more than that. Two-page reviews, a score at the end, recommendation... it's good as a consumer tool but as a "review" it's slightly less than what it could be. It's a shame because a lot of reviewers have a really nice style, it's just shoved through a format I don't think is optimal for the medium they're writing about.

My thing about in-depth reviews is that, well... reviews need to come out before or during or before week of release for a game, when games feel like the sort of thing that would benefit greatly from hindsight and further experience. There was a magazine here in Australia called PC Power Play that reviewed Left 4 Dead twice; one month after another. That, I feel, is the sort of thing games would benefit from, because unlike movies, they do not exist in a vacuum. They constantly warp and change, be it with bug fixes or other game releases. My problem is that most game reviewers are consumer-help should-you-buy-this game kind of stuff, when gaming needs much more retrospective-style reviews on games that are more recent. Yahtzee has been pulling this off for years, and ironically comes off as the better recommendation tool.

As someone who also "writes" "reviews" (though as a hobby, and I can't say I'm any good), I feel like those 0-to-5-star, "this game's nearly out so have some content" sort of reviews don't do either the game or the critic any justice. Just my two cents, and a lot of it is complaining for the sake of wanting a change, as apposed to born out of any inherent problem. Thanks, as I said, for responding, though, and I hope I haven't caused too much offense with my ignorance... :p
 

Alices

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Haven't had the chance to pick it up yet Battlefield sucked up all my gaming money for now. Glad to hear it is pretty fun. Will have to pick it up when I can.
 

fenrizz

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Picked this up for ?4.99 (with DLC) on the Autumn Sale on Steam.

Enjoying it very much so far.
Highly reccomended.