PQ2: Practical Intelligence Quotient coming to PSP
How old is your brain?
You're no thickie, of course, so you'll most likely remember the original PQ game as an interesting yet flawed diversion; an attempt – not entirely without merit – at cashing in on the wave of brain training software that invaded the handheld market, mostly as a result of the success of Dr Kawashima's DS title.
Not to be outsmarted by its competitor, the PSP responded with a neurone-tickling game of its own and brought along a professor – not just a doctor – to ensure the experience was suitably scientific when it came to measuring the level of a player's intelligence.
Which sounded promising. But in practice the repetitive nature of the tasks combined with the characterless presentation and the fact that you were forced to play through the 100 levels before finding out how your intelligence had been (conservatively) evaluated meant the result may have on occasion been as much fun as a lecture on advanced thermodynamics.
By comparison, while PQ2 doesn't look like being akin to spending a day at your favourite theme park, initial details appear to suggest improvements have been made.
The premise of the game hasn't changed: it's still designed around the concept of evaluating a player's intelligence based on the number of moves and speed in which they complete the various tasks. As in the original game, the full assessment is obtained by completing 100 puzzles (over 250 are promised in total this time, including ten unlockable ones) but, thankfully, you now get some choice in the type of puzzles you play first.
Furthermore, less patient gamers will no doubt relish the opportunity to get a preliminary score after some ten minutes of play, while creative individuals can design their own puzzles, which they can subsequently share with fellow gamers, either through the gamesharing mode or by uploading them via the infrastructure support. The latter option also means less proactive types can simply download new tasks to further extend their PQ2 experience.
Presumably as a way of testing us, no detail has been given on the nature of the puzzles themselves. But a glance at the above shots suggests that, aside from the introduction of some colour-coded based play and the use of what look like teleportation pods, to name the two obvious additions, you shouldn't expect a drastic departure from the tasks faced in the original.
Of course, that's not necessarily a thorough representation of the game's contents and, provided additional variety is included, PQ2 should emerge a stronger, more engaging proposition than its predecessor (reviewed here) when it is released this summer.
