Grottos and gravity

The Pixel Fix is in, and although this space will be used primarily to discuss the many great gaming projects happening in Montreal (both big and small), expect the occasional game recommendation or harsh critique. In that spirit, I have both praise and criticisms to heap onto two of the summer’s most intriguing downloadable hits: Spelunky and Quantum Conundrum.


UNPREDICTABLE: Spelunky
 

The Pixel Fix is in, and although this space will be used primarily to discuss the many great gaming projects happening in Montreal (both big and small), expect the occasional game recommendation or harsh critique.

In that spirit, I have both praise and criticisms to heap onto two of the summer’s most intriguing downloadable hits: Spelunky and Quantum Conundrum.

From the mind of Aquaria co-creator Derek Yu, Spelunky is a cave-diving, platforming adventure that, in theory, is never-ending. Although the motif and goals never change, the levels are randomly generated, meaning it’s impossible to play the same stage twice.

Spelunky was originally released on PCs in 2009 but only recently made its debut on XBox Live Arcade, with spruced-up visuals that borrow a great deal from the Crayola-inspired designs found in Yoshi’s Island — the star explorer is even a dead ringer for baby Mario.

The mines — and other locales, although you may never survive to see them — are pretty short and brimming with loot, not to mention deadly spiders, snakes and other traps.

Because of the tricky level designs that place pitfalls in the most inconvenient spots, death comes swiftly and often for your little adventurer, and restarting a level will cause it to regenerate at random (and drop your loot back down to zero), so any valuable lessons you might have learned from your demise will be for naught. Merely surviving is an infuriating challenge, and that’s to say nothing of the helpless damsels in distress that require saving and the valuable idols that are usually surrounded by perilous traps.

Spelunky’s unpredictability is both its best and worst feature. While it ensures that the game is a perpetually brutal, unforgiving series of trials, it also makes playing over extended periods feel like you’re fumbling endlessly through the dark, never getting any closer to the light at the end of cave.

Available on XBox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Steam, Airtight Games’s Quantum Conundrum could be considered a spiritual successor to the dimension-bending classic Portal. Both first-person puzzle-solving games were created by Kim Swift and share a dark sense of humour (courtesy of a mad scientist narrator played by John de Lancie, aka Star Trek’s Q), but instead of ripping interspatial holes, Quantum Conundrum’s main character can alter a room to make everything (besides himself) light, heavy or slow, as well as reverse gravity.

So while Quantum Conundrum’s blueprint suggests the makings of a brain-teasing, Portal-esque pseudo-scientific romp, the drab old mansion setting doesn’t catch the eye the way the Aperture Science Labs did. The puzzles aren’t as memorable, either, so while all the signs point to another hit, the final result is somewhat inert.

Now, as for what I’ll be playing this week, have a gander at the completely off-the-wall The Real Texas. ■

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