Review - Quantum Conundrum

Was it pure coincidence or someone's idea of a sick joke that Quantum Conundrum should appear on Xbox Live Arcade on the same day that Portal 2 arrived in the Games On Demand section? Whichever it was, it certainly doesn't do Airtight Games' first XBLA effort any favours given the similarities between the two. And there are similarities; hulking great ones that are so blindingly obvious that even my other half, who has virtually no understanding of games, exclaimed 'Hey, that's just like Portal!' when she stepped into the room while I was playing it.

Of course, knowing the history makes the similarities a bit more understandable. Long story short: Quantum Conundrum is the brainchild of Kim Swift, the former lead designer at Valve on the original Portal who left to join Airtight Games. That's fine and all, but while it gives the likenesses a bit of context, it also makes you wonder whether Ms Swift is something of a one-trick pony when it comes to design ideas. Still, bit late to think about that now…



But while the over-arcing concept of Quantum Conundrum is pretty much identical to Portal – silent protagonist advances through rooms by solving spacial-awareness puzzles while disembodied voice talks to you – that isn't to say it's exactly the same. Instead of a portal gun, you've got an glove; instead of creating portals to move through space instantaneously, you apply four dimensional states (one at a time) to the local area that change the properties of objects around you. Too complex? It's really not: Fluffy makes things lighter so you can pick them up, Heavy makes even light objects super-tough, Slow-Motion makes time move slower and Reverse Gravity obviously swaps the area's gravity around. The trick is knowing which ones to apply when and how to use them to open doors or press switches that allow you to progress to the next chamber.

You don't get all the powers at once though, which is part of the puzzle - initially, it's just Fluffy and Heavy, with Slow-Motion and Reverse Gravity getting introduced later on, while each room has its own selection of permitted powers that limit what you can do. There are even times where certain powers are available in a room, but only once you've retrieved their respective batteries and plugged them into the main generator, adding even further complexity to the riddles that need solving. It's thought-provoking, relatively mind-bending and offers up a whole host of 'Ah-ha!' moments that all good puzzles games should. In short, it's pretty good fun.



However, it's also incredibly fiddly at times. That's mainly because there's a greater emphasis on platform jumping and perfectly-positioned movement, which never work particularly well from a first-person perspective. It's also because so many of the puzzles require very specific placement of objects, resulting in a huge number of 'do-overs' when you mess things up the first/second/third time - something of an annoyance when a puzzle has multiple components and it's the last one, after watching everything go smoothly, that screws up. And, most importantly, it's because the spectre of death is constantly hanging over you, with the result of many a mistimed jump or badly-aimed throw being a black screen with an unfunny joke on it.

Unfortunately, it's not just these death-lightening moments that fall flat on their comedy faces; the entire game, which desperately attempts to shoehorn character into its action via cartoon visuals and disembodied voiceover, just isn't funny or charming. Where Portal seemingly had ample charm despite being very clean and clinical, Quantum Conundrum's warm and welcoming style only serves to make it devoid of anything that could be called character – there's too much wasted space, too many identical corridors to walk through for no good reason other than to give the game time to throw some pointless story exposition at you, too much time where you're not shifting dimensions or moving safes from one end of the room to the other.



And sadly, since all that time is spent having to listen to Professor Quadwrangle waffle on about things that have no bearing on the action and won't make you laugh, it's hard not to notice the shortcomings of the voiceover work. In theory, having John de Lancie (the guy who played Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation) reading your script should be a work of genius, but that isn't the case at all. Compared to J K Simmon's ridiculously enthusiastic take on Cave Johnson in Portal 2 – again with the Portal comparisons! – de Lancie seems positively bored by what he's reading. It's a comment here about a painting, an aside there about how he's stuck in what appears to be a giant pocket, a general musing on how this next section is really quite tricky which, since it's quite tricky, you'll end up hearing over and over again after you continually die and restart. What it never is, however, is funny, which is surprising considering how it's obviously meant to be.

The thing is though, none of that does any true damage to the core of what Quantum Conundrum achieves, as it's an incredibly clever little game (the emphasis on little, since it's also rather short) and has more than enough quality in the central gameplay to carry the negatives. Or, at least, it does until the ending arrives since the final segment is hugely underwhelming – it's not just that the finale is totally rubbish, but you can actively see the game winding down as it approaches until there's nothing left to do but a single thing that you'd learnt by the middle of the second area. It's almost as though Airtight Games couldn't settle on a decent conclusion and opted for a complete cop-out instead, hanging all its hopes on it being able to clear up the mess if/when a sequel gets commissioned.



I don't know, maybe I'm coming at this from the wrong angle/dimension. Maybe having extensive experience of Portal has muddied my eyes to what Quantum Conundrum's doing; maybe I'm being unduly harsh on it for trying to be something it's not, rather than letting it be what it is. I don't think I am though. I mean, if someone with virtually no gaming knowledge can see the similarities, why ignore them? Better to have it all out in the open than trying feverishly to brush them under the carpet, especially when that carpet's as generic and not funny as Quantum Conundrum's overall presentation. Is it enjoyable? Yes, to a degree (though maybe more of an 800 Microsoft Point degree rather than a 1,200 one). It's just not as enjoyable as some other incredibly similar games you could be playing instead…