Cube
- May 30, 2007 14:03 PM PST
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Should a good puzzle game be infuriating? There's certainly not much wrong with Cube. In fact, moving a crate from point A to point B has probably never been this engaging; the game is colorful, stemming from color-coded zones of varying difficulty, and the music is cool, if not cool enough to be terribly noticeable.
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End Over End
Using the D-pad for controls is natural, since cubes can only tip end over end in four directions anyways. All other buttons are for camera control or incidental item uses such as dropping a clone cube or triggering a power ball explosion. Rather than having players worry about which direction is up or down while maneuvering their camera around three dimensions, the player is given one view and one view only to move around in. You can peek around the corner, but you better hope your memory is up to the task of remembering whether there was a sinkhole over there or it's instant death.
Getting to the end of a level is often a grueling experience, but not because of camera spasms-- it's actually quite agile; probably more agile than the average player's puzzling skills. No, the problem is that bombs sit in inconvenient places, roll around the level, or are shot at you from cannons while other levels are littered with arrows that change direction when you move into them or stick to you so you can place them elsewhere. And keep in mind that I haven't even mentioned other hazards like disappearing blocks, fans that blow you away, barriers with switches; it's a hard game!
It's made harder by the fact that the timer in the corner isn't just for brags. The gold medal limit seems to go by in the blink of an eye, and then you're left with silver or death. Apparently bronze is for losers. It's maddening to finally have the solution to a stage in your grasp and then find that the ticking has stopped. If you get too upset, don't think that the level editor will be a serene break from the action, because that thing actually does have somewhat difficult vertigo-inducing controls.
Is Cube fun? Not...really, but its clever torture.
