The partitions round me are principally white, made from blocks – scientific however with an underlying menace, not in contrast to the wipe-clean tiles of a dental surgical procedure. This a puzzle chamber, one in a sequence of them, with elevators taking me between every one. But GLaDOS is nowhere to be seen and it appears Chell has lastly discovered her voice. Oh wait, maintain on, I forgot once more: this isn’t Portal 3.
Find out how the builders pieced together the puzzle design of Q.U.B.E. 2.
Fans of Valve’s devilishly good first-person puzzle sequence have been ready years for a 3rd sport. We thought it was going to emerge in 2017 however that turned out to be an unexpected spin-off. And whereas Valve say they’re returning to making games there’s not a lot level holding out for Portal 3. In the meantime, nonetheless, there’s Q.U.B.E. 2, which finds one other method to deploy these sorts of enclosed puzzle areas, one that’s each recent and acquainted.
You tackle the function of Amelia Cross, an archaeologist stranded inside an historical monolithic construction on an alien planet. Instead of a portal gun you’re given gloves which let you manipulate sure cubes within the setting. The key to the puzzle design is the constraints of those gloves – solely one in every of every color dice might be lively at anybody time. To succeed, it’s a must to look to the followers, magnets, and different contraptions – similar to movable platforms – that disguise in plain sight.
Generating a block that must be magnetised, stood on, after which shot throughout a room with you on it, seems like you’re breaking the sport’s guidelines, stepping exterior of the accredited boundaries. Just as in Portal, the sport’s designers are all the time one step forward of you however by no means let it appear that approach. You may rotate a platform with a view to ascend up the extent, then end up on the highest level with no method to traverse a spot. Just a little head scratching later you’ll realise that the platform you moved a second in the past, and forgot about, can be meant to behave as a bridge. These are the sorts of options that shouldn’t be options, which make you’re feeling like you could have found one thing which no person thought of earlier than you probably did.
Like Chell’s, Amelia’s journey via the construction is greater than an escape – there’s a bigger fact she must uncover. She just isn’t alone, both. While Portal had the mocking voice of GLaDOS to inform its story, Q.U.B.E. 2 has Amelia talk with one other survivor, a commander named Emma. You hear from Emma in bursts, as her communication system falters every now and then, however she is all the time encouraging and helps Amelia to delve additional into the mysteries of the planet. Even so, if I’m trustworthy, I don’t belief Emma. Not after the entire Wheatley fiasco.
The risk in Q.U.B.E. 2 is far much less apparent than it’s within the Portal video games. There are not any turrets, no poisonous water, and no platforms which have spikes or can crush you. Occasionally, nonetheless, Amelia will come throughout a statue in a red-lit room which, when investigated, will play a brief, jumbled transmission. Different voices, scrambled components of a sentence, all sound collectively to make an ominous assertion. What is the reality behind this ever-changing planet? The sport’s drip-fed thriller is a welcome break from all that onerous work fixing puzzles, and helps to encourage you once you come up in opposition to any brick partitions alongside the best way.
The story is helped alongside additional by the characters in Q.U.B.E. 2 being extra seen than they’re in Portal. With Amelia and Emma’s faces on present within the sport’s opening, after they first talk, you may set up a reference to them right away. It makes it simpler, over time, to care about their shared plight. You are given a reminder of the physique you inhabit by Amelia’s arms, too, that are practically all the time on display, hovering in entrance of her face like little raptor claws. Occasionally, she flexes her arms, and she’s going to stretch – it have to be a fairly uncomfortable place to maintain your arms in, to be honest. As foolish as picturing her posture is perhaps, it makes for a extra human perspective than staring down the barrel of a gun.
Q.U.B.E. 2 takes the first-person puzzler in a path I can solely hope Portal Three may sometime go. You are now not confined to claustrophobic, subterranean chambers, and can catch common glimpses of the sky, the daylight casting angular shadows behind all of these cubes. I even discovered a tree at one level. The magic and fantastic thing about the expertise helps to create a serene set of areas that do the identical job of relieving the extra intense components of puzzle fixing that Portal’s jokes do. Sure, you’re nonetheless confined, penned in by fences, doorways solely opening when it’s time. But there’s a sense of a wider world past these puzzle rooms. Aperture Science aren’t the one gamers within the enterprise.
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