Aftermath Review/Thoughts

[Porygon]

I just 100% completed Aftermath today and wanted to offer my feedback. :) This should be short, shorter I hope than my long-winded Lost Orbit review.

Puzzle Design: Sate of the art, as ever. I enter every puzzle room thinking "They can't possibly incorporate all these elements into the puzzle!" And it all comes together. Basically, it's coherence. I feel that once or twice puzzles (usually for the collectables) were too reliant on somewhat unreliable green cube physics, but among those cases it was usually down to precise timing in the end - flipping a magnet at just the right moment and that sort of thing.

For future reference, if it matters - if the team is up to it, officially published walkthroughs for each puzzle would be an immense treat. I'd get a kick out of seeing if the devs thought about the puzzle the same way I did. Unfortunately I can't remember off the top of my head if it was Dave Hall who is still responsible for puzzle design. In any event, they deserve a medal.

Two new puzzle elements are included - lasers and their prism cube redirectors make a welcome return from the original game, and also hard light surfaces that can be activated/deactivated. I think the fact that I entirely forgot that these were NOT in Q.U.B.E. 2 base game, is a good indicator of how well they've been integrated. They feel like they were meant to be - because they were! I was also grateful that the team didn't feel compelled to include them in every puzzle. Again, this feels natural.

Difficulty: HARD. Probably on par with the hardest puzzles in the base game. Difficulty has a lot of subjectivity involved, but for my part, I found that most of the puzzles challenged my grasp of the game's systems, which is good. I'd say that it *felt* harder than the base game and slightly harder than Lost Orbit. They did achieve their mission of creating extra challenge. The Master Room puzzle was a real mind-bender and I wholeheartedly approve!


Atmosphere, my favorite part: Already I've gone on too long and I'll try to keep this concise. It's difficult to boil down a weighty atmosphere. It occured to me that while Lost Orbit felt like everything I like about the original game and more, Aftermath feels like everything I like about the *sequel* and more.

The original game's chill atmosphere (and by extension Lost Orbit) was very calm, cool, and subdued. Despite my qualms with some plot/dialogue choices, Q.U.B.E. 2's atmosphere was well done, but in a different way. It was cosmic, I think, cosmic sadness and cosmic apprehension. Aftermath gives this vibe. The choice to include music bits from the main game was fantastic, and reinforces this. The environment is unique to the sequel.

MAJOR SPOILER DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT MAJOR SPOILER :)
The ending? Oh man. That was crazy. While Lost Orbit's entry was like the original game, all but devoid of plot and rather pleasantly ambiguous, Aftermath's ending feels like a forebodingly relevant farewell. You are dropped off outside of the puzzle area. Immediately while climbing some stairs, the booming, thumping heartbeat of the Entity begins to play. Milly (I guess?) begins to gasp for breath. And the most poignant soundtrack piece, Oasis, runs. (I love this piece, it's mournful but full of feeling) More of those frightening human/qube statues appear along the way. At the top of the staircase, looming in the gloom, is a hanging qube. We've never seen its like, not in the base game. It looks a little like the heart of the Entity, with pulsing red tubes are leading out of it. Milly can insert her glove, like she does in the base game when you gain a qube ability - only this time your gloves are DRAINED OF COLOR. For the first time, we've lost everything. We give up our power, with astonishment but also understanding and resignation. And this is where the game says goodbye.

It's thick with that cosmic apprehension and sadness that characterizes the sequel. I think the team called this a farewell to QUBE 2. If it's okay, I'd like to say farewell back, and thanks.


Wow, I can't keep anything concise, can I? 9.5/10, except for some weird physics moments, this is an excellent DLC. Thanks to Toxic Games for their work!

[doiedwards]

Finished Lost orbit and Aftermath with all collectibles. In overall, very good, good challenges. But, I have to address that in some rooms where the "manipulation" of the behaviors of objects like cubes or balls was sometimes frustrating, and the physics does not seem to make sense. Also frustration when you have to repeat a process because one cube did not land correctly on a column of cubes.
In spite of that, it is a very good dlc and I was expecting the QUBE 2 game to be more like it when it was released. Now, this is what I call a QUBE game.

[doiedwards]

The ending did not give me the level of thrill I read about. It is probably because it makes a long time I did not play it and I lost the motivation from the first ending.

[Toxic Games]

Wow, that's an absolutely amazing review and a deep understanding of the game, Chief :) Thanks very much for your kind words and for your fitting farewell!

[Porygon]

Thank YOU guys for this series and the entire experience. I still vote the original game as my favorite, but I'll be darned if the sequel didn't have fantastic puzzles and atmosphere. And the soundtrack is probably the most played music on my phone. :D