While playing your PSP, have you ever thought to yourself “I wonder how smart I really am? I wish there were a game that would tell me just that-” Well, all of your wishes just came true. For all those who have a PSP and were fortunate enough to play Intelligent Qube for the PS1 comes PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient. Now, this game is not a sequel, or even a follow up. It really has nothing to do with IQ. PQ doesn’t hold your attention as long as IQ did. It’ll hold your attention for a couple hours at a time at best. At times, the only thing that will keep you going is the sheer frustration of some of the puzzles. They become a personal vendetta and you won’t stop playing until you beat that puzzle.
Classifying this as a game wouldn’t be right. It’s more of a test: well at least it tries to be one. The whole purpose of this game was to find out just how smart you are. But in the beginning, the puzzles are so easy; you’d swear that you were a genius. The as the game progresses the puzzles get more and more challenging. As I mentioned before, some of them are damn frustrating.
The puzzles consist of you moving a guy around a room filled with boxes, crates, lasers, and the occasional maze. The whole point of the game is to get your guy from the starting point to the exit door in the shortest amount of time possible. To do this you have to move said boxes and crates around to help you through. The boxes and crates can serve as tools to help you step up onto higher ground, or they can be used to block lasers or guards. All depending on that particular puzzle every time you move a box or crate, you will use a move. So not only do you have to worry about beating a puzzle in the shortest time possible, but also use as few moves as possible. Of course if you fail a puzzle, or feel that you can do better at beating it, you can always retry it. And that comes in handy towards the end of the game. Trial and error is used often in this game. Fortunately, if you need to practice or aren’t sure how to do certain things, there is a tutorial.
The controls are fairly simple. You move the guy with the D-pad; the X button picks up and drops the boxes. If you need to move a crate, just hold down the X button and use the D-pad to move it. The left and right shoulder buttons rotate the camera. The only issue with that is it doesn’t lock on.
The graphics won’t set your PSP on fire, they simply fall into the category of visuals you are used to seeing on the system. The rooms you are in are made up of; yup you guessed it, more boxes. Well not exactly boxes, cubes for you to walk on. But that’s ok; it fits the game quite well. The music of the game reminds you of the music that was in the original Tetris. Honestly, you won’t even know that there is music playing-.your just concerned with finishing the puzzle at hand.
Once you finish the game, you can upload your score to the net and see how you fair against others who played. And, that unfortunately, is all the competing you will do online. PQ doesn’t support any kind of multi-player. Maybe in the sequel-
Overall, it’s not a bad game. For a puzzle game, it’s relatively short, but at times, frustratingly hard. If you’re looking for a puzzle game that will hold your attention for more than a few hours, try Lumines or the extremely more difficult Mercury. But the hours you spend playing this game are well worth it, if not just to brag about how smart you are, or at least how smart the game claims you to be.
