I was unaware of the involvement of John de Lancie: http://www.videogamer.com/videos/quantum_conundrum_john_de_lancie_trailer.html
I like how he dances around not mentioning Q or Trek.
Lots of stuff could be fixed by patching. Supposedly (I haven’t played it, just read the reviews) some of the puzzles require split-second coordination; that timing could be toned down. Q repeating himself after every single death could be fixed too.
What are the odds that will happen, though?
Valve’s obsession with iteration shows at times like these, when poor Kim’s ship-quality game is being compared to the obscenely polished Portal 2. The best time to polish is before you ship, because afterwards, some people are going to veer away if the polish isn’t there, which reduces your money to polish with. The initial score is the one that’s going to stick on Metacritic et al.
(Take me, for example… I only buy a few games a year at this point, and this would have had to come damn close to Portal 2 quality for me to get excited enough about it. So hearing about the rough edges? No sale.)
Played a little tonight. So far it’s structurally identical to Portal, even down to a magic device you carry around to solve puzzles, but unfortunately it’s not nearly as funny.
Puzzle difficult is so far set to “lite” but there were a couple of times I had to pause to think so that’s about right; it’s just that without the humor of Portal, it gets kind of samey after not too long.
I think the PSNLive versions are coming next month. My brain has been itching for exercise of this type.
Kim Swift is actually a girl.
The first impression isn’t that good. It’s like Portal but
-being less smart and less funny
-having less “woah” moments, the central mechanic feels not as strong
-being a console port (no graphical options except resolution, and the motion blur is horrible, big mouse acceleration without way to turn it off)
-incredibly, it does have a few problems in the performance, even if graphically is just normal.
The puzzles get better further on when you have to combine different dimensions (or whatever they’re called).
Really crawled on my system, so thanks to the people on the steam forum for helping me change the config files.
Just to take you seriously for a second - which I appreciate may be a colossal mistake - RPS likes to ham up the English nature of the site. I’m a little surprised it’s not “Wot I fink”.
So, wait, it’s a “console port” but isn’t available for any consoles yet?
I guess the QA/Launch latency for XBLA/PSN must be long…
Well, I just finished the last level, and I quite enjoyed it. I agree the art & sound are not super ambitious, and most of the puzzles are pretty easy (except one which I couldn’t figure out at all and had to look up the answer).
But I had a good time with it. I’ll probably try to improve my scores on some levels and figure out the R&D lab thing. And I bought the steam package that includes the first two expansions, so looking forward to that.
I wasn’t thinking that hard about this game, but then it was one of the daily deals so I downloaded the demo. I liked it so much I bought the season pass.
I’m only around an hour into the full game, but I already like it much more than Portal 2. On the the technical level, I’m so glad it’s not running on the Source tech so I don’t have to wait for a new level to load every goddamn minute. The mansion is pretty seamless, which adds more than you would think.
As for gameplay, so far the game seems designed around giving me fun puzzles, rather than guiding me through empty backdrops as robots talk at me, which is awesome. I actually like that I have to time things correctly and jump around. Fiddling with the dimensions is really fun – I can see why a designer would love to mess around with this stuff.
I agree it’s not as funny as the Portal games, but I don’t think it’s trying to be. The atmosphere is very different. It’s important to remember that you play a child, visiting his crazy uncle’s mansion. The mansion is a warm, inviting location, and I’m having fun just looking at the silly book titles and the funky architecture.
Basically, this game is pushing all the right buttons for me, and I look forward to spending more time with it.
New DLC (the season pass stuff) is coming July 31 and August 28th. Each one is set in a new wing of the mansion. Looking forward to 'em.
DLC is out! Just a bump!
I played the first puzzle! There’s no story or dialogue, as far as I can tell. The first puzzle was pretty big and used all the dimensions. I had a nice time with it. I will play the rest.
The only way I could figure out to play the DLC is to go to the levels menu, arrow over to the new “wing”, then pick the first level and say “continue from here”. Pretty clunky.
Also I solved the first puzzle, well, ok, I’ll put it in a spoiler…
How I solved the first puzzle
without even using that button on the first platform? I just threw a safe over to the exit and rode it over there. Was there more to the level than that??
Edit: I was wrong, there is more to the level than that. I’m still working on it… It’s a bit frustrating, actually, there seems to be a lot more timing-and-accuracy intensive bits than in the original game. But maybe I’m just doing it wrong.
Ha! Must have been a bug. There’s another section of that puzzle that you didn’t need to bother with.