Year: 2022
Rating: E
Time Played: 565 minutes / 9.42 hours
It’s wild to me that I decided to play Q.U.B.E., especially after I wasn’t particularly satisfied with the sequel, Q.U.B.E. 2. Something in me had a hankering to play a first-person physics-based puzzle game, and I figured I had this game for free in my library, so why not? Even as a 10th Anniversary Edition—which mostly just extended the playtime with a few extra features—I felt other games in the genre were better than this. If anything, it made me appreciate the sequel a little more.
The main game-play mechanic in this game is a glove that can create a variety of different cubes that can help the player move through a series of rooms on a mysterious space station. There are a lot of different cubes that you have to learn how to use as the game progresses. It felt like there were almost a dozen by the end that had a frustratingly large number of combinations. As far as the plot, it was interesting, if not hard to grasp due to the way the audio came across.
Where the sequel felt too easy, this game had a steep learning curve for applying new cubes to each puzzle. I had to give in and watch a tutorial video just to figure out the second half of this game. Most of the solutions didn’t feel intuitive because of how complex they became once there were over six different cubes to use. That there also needed to be precise 3D platforming for some of these puzzle solutions to work was a tough challenge to overcome as well.
An OK physics-based puzzle game that gets way too complex, I give Q.U.B.E. 2.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
