Q.U.B.E. 10th Anniversary | PC Review
Q.U.B.E. 10th Anniversary, developed and published by Toxic Games, is a platform puzzle game. As expected, this release is a celebration and a culmination of a decade of brain twisting puzzling and features the original 2012 version of the game with improved visuals, audio and new puzzles alongside a few quality-of-life gameplay tweaks. There is also the Director's Cut that features the 2014 version of the game with a voice-over narrative. Finally, there is an entire new chapter added to the game, which adds around 4 hours of additional content onto the game. It is currently available on Windows PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, and for my review I was playing the Windows PC version.
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Q.U.B.E. is a first-person platform puzzler that has you thrown straight into a 3D world that is essentially a giant cube. You must manipulate cubes throughout the world using special high-tech gloves. Each colour of cube has a unique role to play in helping you navigate your way through the world. Blue cubes will act as jump pads, whilst yellow cubes will create a set of stairs for you. If you're a fan of the Portal games then you’ll very much feel at home in this scientific, sterile world and the puzzling will feel very natural to you very quickly.
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You're introduced immediately to the various mechanics and despite the simplicity in concept, the puzzle design always has some fresh, new and mind-boggling ways of applying the concepts, so that each new puzzle you're faced with will feel fresh, and the game won’t feel repetitive, which in itself is excellent. There are seven sectors with multiple levels within and the 10th Anniversary edition also includes an eighth sector, that, as previously mentioned, adds a whole new four to six hours of gameplay. I was overall happy with the puzzle quality and the difficulty was well-balanced for me. I found some of the platforming a little more difficult than the puzzling, which was mitigated by some in-game features that I’ll discuss shortly. The majority of the puzzles felt like plain sailing, but in true puzzle fashion, there was always the odd one thrown in there that really stumped me and took me a little while to figure out. At no point, however, did any of it become tedious or frustrating, because the answer was always there to be found with enough experimentation.
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As previously mentioned, there are some accessibility options added into the game that really helped with some of the slightly frustrating aspects. I was playing the game mouse and keyboard, so I found the platforming and the timing to be a bit frustrating at times. I quickly discovered that there was actually a jump assist so instead of feeling like I was bashing my head against a brick wall by failing at hitting jumps, I turned that on and really found my enjoyment increased tenfold. There is a lot to be said for accessibility options in games, and it makes me happy to see developers putting these things in, because this allows games to be marketable to a greater audience rather than people feeling restricted because they struggle with platforming but love puzzles.
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Many years ago, I did dabble a little bit in the original Q.U.B.E. release, so I do have a little bit of experience with the game already, and it was nice to see it revamped and updated a fairly considerable amount. I think the 10th Anniversary edition managed to remain true to the original game, but still brought it forward and improved on many concepts. Overall, I’d highly recommend checking out Q.U.B.E. 10th Anniversary to any puzzle fans, particularly fans of games like Portal.
Lj’s Rating: 4 out of 5.
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For more information on Q.U.B.E. 10th Anniversary please use the following links...
Toxic Games - Developer | Publisher | Facebook | Twitter | Website
Many thanks to Renaissance PR and PressEngine for the Review Key.
Q.U.B.E. 10th Anniversary | Windows PC | PlayStation | Xbox | Nintendo
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