PSP Fanboy review: PQ2
PQ2, or Practical Intelligence Quotient 2, provides everything a PSP gamer could possibly want from a puzzle game on the handheld. It features simple, but attractive graphics, some killer music, and an impressive array of networking features. With a sleek presentation, brisk load times, and a easy-to-understand concept, PQ2 comes easily recommended. However, the difficulty of these puzzles borders on the maniacal, and gamers may find themselves overwhelmed, even frustrated, by many of the seemingly-impossible tasks the game asks.
Like other great puzzle games, the basic mechanic of PQ2 is easily to understand. You must navigate your avatar to the exit. Obviously, this is easier said than done. You can navigate the low-key environments by moving and using various blocks found in the level. At first glance, this may seem a bit too easy: the first puzzles simply have players merely moving and shoving a few boxes around.
However, things get much more difficult, very quickly.
Various obstacles will get in your way, from laser boxes, to glass boxes, which shatter when dropped from a high distance. We're not even talking about other moving dangers--simply figuring out the correct placement of boxes to get to the exit is a daunting challenge, and oftentimes, players will wonder if it's even possible to get to the exit with the tools provided to them.
To complicate matters further are police officers and detectives that, for some reason or other, want to force you to restart your puzzle (did you commit some sort of crime? What kind of pretext is hidden in this game?). Police officers will simply go from one police box to another, using straight lines as much as possible. Take note of this: when faced with a barrier, they will tend to go left. Detectives will follow footsteps that your avatar leaves behind--thankfully, boxes with footsteps can be moved to trick detectives into following the wrong trail. These characters have set AI patterns which must be learned and internalized in later puzzles. One of the more complex levels we tried had players forcing a police officer to step on three buttons consecutively by placing obstacles in his way. This took about half an hour to figure out ... who knew something so simple could be so deceptively complicated?
Figuring out the solutions to these puzzles is certainly gratifying. The progression of difficulty ranges from infantile simplicity to break-your-system impossibility. Although we're told that each level has a clear answer, there's more than a handful of levels which we've completely given up on entirely (and we're waiting for someone far more intelligent than us to give us the answers!).
Although we were often frustrated by the insane difficulty of many of these puzzles, we're glad to report that none of them are necessary to get the game's titular "PQ," a metric of measuring intelligence within the game. Just like the more standard IQ, the average PQ is 100, and players will want to see how far they can go from the mean. To get the most comprehensive score, players will want to take the full 100-puzzle test, which gives players 5 hours to try and complete the increasingly challenging puzzles. There's no need to complete all the tests: however, not being able to complete them all (by prematurely finishing the test, or by running out of time) will result in a lowered PQ -- and a note to your parents from your teacher.
There's another quick way of measuring one's PQ: the quick exam, which selects five random levels for completion in ten minutes. Because they're random, some levels will be prove to be overly daunting. A friend that attends Harvard failed on the second level, causing some hilarious confidence issues. (I failed on my third level, effectively "proving" I was fifty percent more intelligent than her. Sorry, Karen.)
Those that manage to master the challenges found within PQ2 will find an endless amount of content available through Infrastructure options. The game includes a built-in level editor, which allows you to not only create new levels for your own game, but to share on the web. Right from day one, new user-created levels can be downloaded to the system. There's a feature called "Weekly Test," which features "select user puzzles" -- there are twenty to download right from the game's launch! If you still have a hankering for more, you can download additional User Puzzles by creating your own search criteria.
If you're somehow unashamed of your PQ (unlike me), you'll want to brag by entering the Network Ranking mode, which compares your score to users around the world. Not only will you enter your 100-puzzle test scores, but you'll also compete for the high score in each "Weekly Test." As long as the game maintains a decent level of popularity, and people are creating their own challenges, PQ2 has a potentially infinite lifespan. Certainly, that's something to get excited about.
The fantastic presentation values, the incredible Networking features, and downright fun gameplay of PQ2 make it easily one of the best pure puzzle games on the system. Although we recommend everyone to try the game, we do have our reservations about the full title: it might simply be too difficult for its own good. Those that are willing to invest a lot of time and brain energy will love PQ2. Its generous Infrastructure mode makes it a likely candidate to never leave your UMD drive ... ever.
PSP Fanboy Score: 7.5
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See also:
PQ2 downloadable demo
PSP Fanboy review: Crush
