Quantum Conundrum: The Desmond Debacle DLC

6 more difficult levels of mostly juggling safes around. Also there is a kind of [spoiler]"boss fight"[/spoiler] at the end. No IKE and no professor.

If you enjoyed the main game then this is a great little DLC to give you 6 more challenging but not frustrating levels. There is no story to this DLC just simply an additional 2 hours of content on top of the main game. Basically if you enjoyed the main game then there is no reason not to pick up this cheap DLC, would recommend.

This is good if you liked the CORE GAMEPLAY of the main game. There's no story at all, so if you had any likings to the narrative of the main game, it's gone in here. Also, levels are longer, and rely more on speed and reflexes, in a way. You still have to do some puzzle solving, but one you figure stuff out, there's still some way ahead of you trying to actually make it work. The levels here are more obscure and it's not so easily understandable what's the next room's goal. I found this DLC much more difficult than the main game and even the second DLC. But still quite fun.

Good environmental art, VERY poor puzzle design. No dialogue, no clear communication of what you should do at certain points, LOTS of just hard platforming and timing.

Disappointing, frustrating. Not much of a puzzle, more akin to "how many tries will it take you to make that rng part do what you want it to", which, given these levels have their time/shift goals as well, makes one consider hate crimes regarding the devs. It's a logic puzzle where the way of getting to the solution can't be reliably reproduced regardless of player's actions. It's like you played FPS and spawned with a random weapon every time with 33% chance to have none at all. And don't even get me started on the glitches. In the attempt to find the solution I've seen the sphere (or rather, the dodecahedron, with dodecahedron physics, that we're supposed to pretend is a sphere and all puzzles treat it as if it were a sphere) explode for no reason, lose momentum for no reason, collide with thin air, gets completely stuck between parts where it's not even supposed to fit and phase outside of the map. Managed to do the latter with the player character too.

The DLC offers six new levels, supposedly themed around the "Desmond" drinking bird character/figure. The sixth level has a surprise which has potential for an exciting story but for me it feels that there are many missing pieces of the puzzle. Like, what's the backstory behind all this? Where and when is it set? Does it follow on from the ending of the base game, or is it set as though it were in an alternate timeline/universe? The fact that there's zero dialogue in this doesn't help much either. It feels more like a compilation of community Portal 2 test chambers but using QC's dimensional shifting element. Also, despite the DLC's name, only one or two (I can't quite remember off the top of my head) levels actually contain a Desmond. The levels themselves are a little more or less around the difficulty of the main story's last two wings'/chapters' levels but significantly longer than the average level. Most don't really require any hard or outside-the-box thinking; you can see the solution, but the process of executing it is more often than not tedious and rests on trial-and-error (game's odd physics don't help either). What I dislike most about it is that due to the nature of these new levels, acquiring shift and time goals is really frustrating. For example, the last section of one level requires you to use the slow-mo and reverse-gravity dimensions to not only ride a dodecahedron across an obstacle-riddled gap, but then insert it into an upside-down vat reactor thingy. If you manage that first try, excellent job! Otherwise, you will probably miss out on the shift goal and need to redo the whole level again, without messing up on the earlier sections (again, trial-and-error). For me, all's fine on the first and second retries, but after the sixth attempt I wish I were playing Portal instead. Not to mention there are achievements for attaining all shift and time goals; good luck if you plan to 100% them. So should you get it? Overall, the DLC feels more suitable for [i]very[/i] casual play; RECOMMEND if you really love QC and want to enjoy new game content without any care about your level stats and achievements or regards with the story; NOT RECOMMEND otherwise. If you're an achievement hunter, well I suppose you have to get it to 100% the game, right? Be sure to heed my warning. If you do decide to get it, I suggest waiting for sale. I personally feel that the base price seems a little much for what it offers (in terms of quality), especially with all the flaws and the fact that I could play thousands of custom Portal 2 levels at no additional cost to the base game.

This is entirely a pack of levels, nothing more. It was disappointing to find that's the Professor and Ike are missing, having no voiceover like the original game. There's not a connection to the story either. Felt empty this way. I found it tedious at times. It relied a lot on floating on objects and had several trial-and-error physics puzzles. Despite having a few good ones too, it overall felt much weaker than the base game so wouldn't recommend it.

I did not like this DLC, even considering the low price. Too much floating things around with perfect timing and not enough puzzle. (I will be giving a thumbs-up on the other DLC, though it wasn't great.

New puzzles of the worst kind: where you know the answer in seconds and then you spend 20 minutes trying to turn it into life. Maybe it is me, but I was treating Quantum Conundrum more like a puzzle game rather than arcade. On top of that the goal of some rooms is not very clear and you need to look for what the hell are you supposed to do. There is no story or any premise, just new levels. This doesn't bother me much, but some people may feel disappointed.

[h1]Debacle is right[/h1] Did you like the base game? Did you like the minimal story that loosely ties each level together? Did you like the characters of the professor and IKE? You did? [b]Well too bad, they're not here[/b]. This is about trying new things, differently, in a way that says 'Look, I thought of a puzzle using dimensions, then I thought of another one, then I put them together and said "Go do it". Doesn't that sound like fun?' This expansion features the same gameplay of the main game, with all the story, wit and reason removed. It features 6 levels that use all dimensions so it already expects you to know how every dimension works and all the tricks needed to complete each stage. That's right, I said [b]stage[/b]. [u]Each level[/u] consists of 2 - 4 stages, or different puzzles, all connected into one continuous level. These stages may involve doing completely different things, sometimes unrelated to the rest of the level. The puzzles are complicated. Not complex, which is fun to figure out, but complicated meaning boring or frustrating due to reasons. What reasons? Well, for one, there is this 'ball' except it's actually a 10 sided sphere-ish thing that, not being round, means it doesn't 'roll' like a ball sometimes. Or if it does, it may change direction randomly. This makes for alot of frustration when you need to 'roll the ball' down a ramp, up a ramp, up the wall, across the ceiling, down the other side and then jump it across a gap using the ramp located half way up the second wall. Also, collision physics with invisible walls or irregular surfaces. Watching as a ball in flight "randomly" loses momentum due to absolutely nothing, or rolling down a ramp only to suddenly bounce left only adds to the frustration. Most levels are fairly long and will probably be played a few times just because something didn't go the way it was expected to the first time. The last level, or I should say the last stage, features the only actual time limit in the game in a sort of 'boss battle'. You must complete your side of the puzzle before [b][u]IT[/u][/b] completes theirs. You only get 2 dimensions to work with but you need all 4, there is a way, but that was what made it interesting. However, even though I got the DLC for 50 cents, and I said a good thing about the end, for the frustration, and lack of story or even wit, I did not feel that this was worth getting.