Another Playstation Plus game, that I decided to have a blast with. "QUBE" was a brief, but fun, puzzle game that was the perfect length for me to get through in a few sittings.
Viewed in first person, you play an unnamed silent astronaut, captured and placed in an experimental spaceship and suffering from amnesia. You have to navigate the cube-based spaceship by manipulating certainly coloured cubes to maintain your progress. As you navigate the puzzles, you are contacted by a female voice that is reported to be an astronaut on the ISS, who offers encouragement and promises contact with your wife and then by a male voice, who tells you that the experiment is a lie.
"Portal" feels like an obvious touchpoint for this game. The similarly science fiction inspired physics puzzles, the potentially unreliable guide, the first person viewpoint. Though "Qube" is much more of a straight puzzle based game, than "Portal" is. A test of your brain, rather than reflexes. In fact, the game is much less impressive when it does drift towards more timing based challenges, as the controls are just a little bit too fiddly for those to work properly. But there is a lot of invention in the puzzles and it's all very well thought out, given the mechanisms at work.
What was also great for me, but might be a touch less impressive for others is that the game was over in about 5 hours. Three sessions or so saw me through to the end of the story, which given the tragically short amount of gaming time adult me has, was most welcome, particularly as it was a PS+ game. Had I paid £15 or so, I might have been less impressed. There were time attack modes that I could have pressed on with, had I been inclined, and there are a number of hidden areas within the main game to look for.
I enjoyed QUBE a lot, despite its occasionally fiddly moment, and if physics puzzles are up your alley I'm sure you will too.
