Quantum Conundrum

Quantum Conundrum is a first person physics based puzzle game created by Airtight games and designer Kim Swift. If Kim Swift sounds like a familiar name that maybe due to the fact that she was a lead designer on the hit game Portal. I suppose you could say that Airtight games was hoping to capture some of that Portal magic with Quantum Conundrum and while I wouldn't say they managed to capture the magic they certainly managed to barrow some charm.

Game: Quantum Conundrum  For: PC  Publisher: Airtight Games

Overall Score: 80 out of 100       Rating: Great

Graphics:  Current gen. Graphics. Courtesy of Unreal 3.	Interface: Standard fair. Could have used a few more settings options.
Aesthetics: Top notch art design and game assets throughout.	Entertainment factor: Very. But you'll need breaks in between all that puzzling.
Game play: Enjoyable if sometimes frustrating.	Innovation factor: You've never seen physics play like this before.
Sound design: Everything sounds like you'd expect only more scientific.	Environmental design: The mansion is far too samey for my taste.
Music: Very good. I just wish there was more of it!	Replay value: Once you solve the puzzles it's just another play though.

Graphically Quantum Conundrum is on par with many other games of the current console generation as it runs on the Unreal 3 engine. It fails to offer much in the way of configuration as the PC version having only resolution and Gama under the graphical settings at release day, this has been fixed with a patch, but the game still offers very few settings to tweak.

Aesthetically the game hits its mark, even if it's only just. The charmingly stylized world of Quadrangle mansion looks fantastic, though a bit samey and sparse. The art team at Airtight has done a good job. Their use of shape and color are solid, the textures feel detailed while keeping with the simplified painterly look of the games concept art and in game portraits. The modeling is very nice and the alternate models for the various objects that clutter the mansion are all exceptionally good too. The animation is good, the shaders used look top notch, but all this is stunted due to the samey level design. Puzzling through similar looking levels devoid of any purpose but that of puzzle solving is not a problem when one has signed up for the Aperture science testing initiative, but when your puzzling in a sprawling manor owned by a quirky genius it  leaves a lot to be desired.

The music and sound design are solid. All the scientific gizmos hum, blip, and chirp like a electronic symphony. The music is top tier stuff, it works very well and it was not distracting when I was stumped on any of Quantum Conundrum's more devious puzzles.

Game play is were Quantum Conundrum really starts to shine. The physics behave and act much like you’d expect them too. The puzzles are fair and logical with decent pacing throughout. There are however two fairly bad design issues that become harder to ignore as the game goes on, the issue of precision platforming and the first person POV. Make no mistake this duo of frustration will eventually rear its ugly irksome head and derp your ass  right into a pit of science goo, over and over again in fact.

A first person perspective is not going to cause problems on its own but at several points in Quantum Conundrum you'll have to know how far you are from some various hazard that has been dangled above you, now this normally wouldn’t be a bad thing if you could see how tall you are, but with a fist person puzzler it's hard to get a baring on the size of your un-rendered body. Far to often did I feel far enough away to a high density laser to move forward only to have it unceremoniously slice into my frontal lobe. It was occasions like these where I sat staring at a humorous death screen and asking myself why they hadn’t gone with a third person camera.

Moving about feels good; if a bit slippery at times, as your momentum is taken into account. Jumping is precise, but it maybe too precise as Quantum Conundrum is defiantly the kind of game where you hit your mark or you don't. When you ask a gamer to engage in precision platforming while puzzle solving often on the fly as they sail though the air, it's not unreasonable to think that it might be a good idea to nudge the player onto a precarious platform if they happen to be off by a reasonable, fractional amount. I seem to remember another game did this. When you were moving at high speeds in this game and trying to land on a human sized worm hole they would funnel you into the hole even if you were just a bit off, you know? So you wouldn't snag yourself on the lip of the hole and most probably die because your hurtling at your target at high speed and you're off the mark by a few decimals. I think they called that game Portal. 

But all snarkiness aside, everything is pretty solid and almost everything is fun.

The interface is fairly standard. Interacting with the world is easy enough, though switching to the various dimensions could have been handled better as the key configuration screams for controller shoulder pads and can feel awkward at times especially when quickly toggling into a dimension. Luckily you can switch from a controller to keyboard on the fly and I highly recommend having a 360 style controller on hand as I found some portions of the game worked better with a controller.

If you can get past Quantum Conundrum's samey level design and lack luster ending you're in store for a good puzzle experience. Don't be surprised though if you find yourself wishing the game felt more fleshed out and polished. In the end I enjoyed Quantum Conundrum and I hope, much like I suspect Airtight games must, that this is the beginning of a new franchise with more to come.