Quantum Conundrum Demo PS3 review

Possibly due to the delightful weather I found myself with some spare time and wanting to step away from the wacky world of Skyrim for a moment I downloaded the Quantum Conundrum Demo at about 1.6Gb.

The premise from the trial (as it calls itself) is brief. You're in a house for no apparent reason that belongs to the disembodied voice of a professor who instructs you how to progress through his rooms. To do so you are required to manipulate dimensions which affect the properties of objects scattered about.

The Fluffy dimension makes things lighter, the Heavy dimension makes things heavier and the Slow-Mo Dimension well slows things down.


A benefit of the demo is that it has been designed as such and rather than just throwing you into the first level of the game it takes you through a special sequence that lets you play with these three main dimensions (we don't get access to the Reverse Time dimension though) so you can get a better idea of how the main game works.

It's a first person game. Movement controls are standard; but the shoulder buttons control the switching of dimensions. It's all quite fluid and you can switch to Fluffy, pick up a safe, throw it and then switch to heavy so it won't disintegrate when it hits a laser.

Of the demo 90% of it works well and is definitely in the same mode as the original Portal, which is no big surprise as the makers of that had a hand in this. But I say 90% because there's that last 10% that doesn't work and Portal never had - platforming.

Picture the scene - I stand at the edge of an abyss. slow-time is activated and a table has been projectile vomited from an orifice. I'm supposed to jump onto the table as it goes past.

Try that in first person when you can't see your feet. I jumped I fell; I jumped I landed then fell off the edge of the table. Checkpointing at least  took me back to that initial point, but it took me four attempts to do and then I was expected to jump off at the other end onto a ledge. That took two attempts.

So yeah great potential, but I suspect a large amount of frustration to be found in falling off platforms. I don't mind when I fall off because it's my fault; I do mind when it's the fault of the game mechanics.

Think I'll give this one a miss for the moment then; shame.