Good God this review took a long time. Review

Good God this review took a long time.

Intelligent Qube, the game that measures your IQ, was one hard game

to review (hey, that rhymes). After six grueling months of intense game playing

(without breaks for food and sex, no less), I’ve come to the conclusion that

it doesn’t accurately predict your IQ. No, luckily for me, my IQ isn’t ‘2’.

Although it’s not going to be used in any government studies any time soon,

the game is decently fun even if the graphics look like they were made by a

two year old on speed.

There is no creative story behind this game – in the vein of Tetris it’s just

pure puzzle. The point of Intelligent Qube is to destroy all of the gray

and green blocks on the board, without destroying any black blocks. This may

seem simplistic, but the problem is that these blocks are incessantly approaching

you and threatening to knock you off of the platform you’re standing on. If

you accidentally destroy one of the black blocks, part of the platform breaks

off. Once the platform is too short, you will either fall off or get crushed

by the tumbling blocks.

Strategy is involved by using the green blocks, which destroy a large area

of blocks on the board. These “super blocks” are advantageous, but also are

dangerous because there is more of a chance of destroying the evil, menacing

black blocks. This sounds fairly dumb, but then again so does Tetris when you

explain it.

It is a fairly fun game, but Intelligent Qube has some faults that make

a purchase of Tetris the better buy. First off, the graphics stink. You could

make the argument that they stink in Tetris, but Tetris was meant to have shoddy

graphics. Intelligent Qube attempted to bring in the 3D graphics processing

ability of the Playstation to create an all new playing experience, but it ended

up with just a bunch of cubes with a couple of different textures on them. The

graphics for the player are even worse – an untextured mess of a 3D model represents

you.

Animation is smooth, but with so little going on that’s expected. “But it’s

a puzzle game,” you say, “graphics don’t matter!” If that’s how you feel, you’ll

need to know that there are some serious problems in the gameplay as well. Although

the early levels are a blast, the game becomes exponentially hard too quickly.

As more and more blocks appear on the screen and as the playing field becomes

wider and wider, the game becomes simply too hard.

Friends of mine who consider themselves puzzle experts are dumbfounded at

how difficult this game is. It does deliver a good time in the beginning, but

without serious practice you’ll have a hard time even getting close to beating

the later levels.

Two player mode – ah, the part of puzzle games that can make or break them.

In the case of Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo,

it made the game. In the case of Intelligent Qube, it does nothing. The

two player mode presented in the game isn’t even simultaneous, you play while

your buddy waits and vice-versa. You race to see who can complete a certain

number of levels first, whoever does, wins. Talk about boring! I’d rather see

a split screen two player mode where when you destroyed a block on your side,

a block dropped on your buddy’s side.

Since there is no story, and single player mode becomes old fairly rapidly,

the two player mode saves many puzzle games from entering into total obscurity.

Unfortunately for Intelligent Qube, it just pushes it deeper and deeper into

that niche.

Sound and music are negligible – it’s in there, but it’s a puzzle game, damn

it, and it doesn’t need that sort of thing.

Control is sharp and responsive, luckily, for one misstep in this game and

you’re a dead man. Intelligent Qube may be hard, but at least it’s simple

to control.

I keep comparing the game to Tetris because that seems to be what everyone

else is comparing Intelligent Qube to. In terms of innovation, Tetris wins.

In terms of fun, Tetris wins. In terms of a two player mode, many of the variants

of Tetris win. The bottom line is that you can pick up a cheap copy of Tetris

for the Super Nintendo, Gameboy, or even for your key chain for a whole lot

cheaper than the full price CD that is Intelligent Qube.