Q.U.B.E. 2

I've been playing this game for a few days now and had just reached the end of Chapter 9 at the point where you get into the teleporter, then it crashed with an error message. Fortunately I found a workaround solution to this on the Steam website, which is to download 3 savegame files and overwrite the existing savegame files with them. So for anyone else looking for a solution to this, here's the link you need https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xjb3h2xdk2b5x57/AADcw8iyJ7nkRwou-8UIL7Qaa?dl=0 Now I can continue to the end - haven't finished yet! As to the game itself, I think it is better than QUBE 1 both in the gameplay and the graphics. It's comparable to the dfference between Portal 1 and Portal 2 in that respect. If you love games like Portal then you will probably like the QUBE games too.

Against the first QUBE, this was a step up, but not by much. The most obvious would be the visuals. Unreal Engine has really done some great work on this simple puzzle game that makes the colours and environment really pop; it's slightly surreal but the entire game is meant to be. Another merit are the puzzles. One thing that most puzzle games fall trap to is when they run out of ideas, they start to throw in cheap tricks like that 0.1 second you need to get that absolutely right. The first QUBE actually fell into that trap; spoiler alert: If anyone recalls, they actually forced you to memorise positions of cubes by switching off the lights. That's cheap. QUBE 2 luckily doesn't seem to fall into that issue. They have very basic ideas, sometimes a little too simple, but they didn't try to make it really difficult. Unfortunately, the aforementioned point is a double-edged sword ... because as to save themselves falling into the trap, they really did run out of ideas, and the puzzles are relatively easy. The game took me five hours to chew through and a good 40% is walking and listening to the odd narrative. That brings me around to the other flaw...the story. It starts off interestingly enough. Just you and a lady on the radio. Quite familiar with Portal or the first QUBE...but then it gets dull quite fast. The story is pretty flat and if it's meant to push you forward, it fails. The voice acting is rather good, if you ask me, but it lacks the humour of Portal or any drive to grind on. Another thing is that the physics just don't check out. The toughest part of solving the puzzles is trying to accept that just maybe, while it shouldn't, that's the way it should be done. The object interactions are weird. The real issue for me: No Level Select. Start over or nothing. Pretty big oversight here! Especially with alternate endings. It's a flawed game, but I wasn't too disappointed. Don't go in with high expectations, and you may actually enjoy this game quite a bit.

Very simple puzzles, flat story line. First Q.U.B.E. is much better.

Just finished this game after almost exactly 6 hours. So, much like it's predecessor (as far as I remember), it's a relatively brief experience. However, it's visually more appealing and at least as far is I can recall the original QUBE, this one feels more polished when it comes to how everything controls. There are unfortunately a bunch of problems with it though. For one thing, the puzzles are pretty easy for the most part. I think I only recall two where I was like "I'll come back to this tomorrow". And I'm not that good at puzzle games - as evidenced by other reviews where people write that they've finished QUBE 2 in 2 or 4 hours. Also, while the visuals are of course a vast improvement and largely very nice to look at - for one thing, there are some textures with oddly low resolutions here and there (broken lights), some lens flares (those of the big rectangular, red lights) lag behind and overall, I didn't find the design to have enough variety. At least the indoor sections. Outdoor is fine (and looks pretty stunning) but indoor could've especially used more variation in terms of color. It reminded me of that Mirror's Edge time trials DLC where each level felt unique because of its color and structure. QUBE 2 does offer SOME variety but in my opinion, not enough. Music seems a bit odd because sometimes, something fades in but most of the game is without. I think that they should've made a decision on whether there should be no music in general or everywhere. The story is pretty decent but be warned - once you've finished the game, your save will be purged and you have to play it a second time if you want to see a different ending. But... there are no special perks or anything different about that second run. There's no way that I will do that because while it was very amusing, without any incentive aside from a different ending - no.