It’s easy to recommend Q*Bert: Rebooted to both returning fans and new ones alike. The PlayStation release allows for choice of play either in its classic mode or the more modern version for those who want something a little easier on the eyes.
One of the 80’s arcade classics gets a reboot, and the results are uninspiring.
The core gameplay remains largely the same as it ever was (there is even the option to play the original games) but what was once new and exciting is now very simplistic and repetitive. The less than precise controls don’t help matters much either and resulted in more than a few frustrating leaps into the abyss.
If you were a big fan of Q*bert back in the day you might get a good nostalgia kick from revisiting the game but gaming has moved on a long way since the early 80’s.
This game looks awful, feels awful, and most importantly boring. I never experienced Qbert during their arcade days, but he should have stayed homeless in Wreck It Ralph. What makes matters worst is the game spikes up difficulty around level 35 and has an unfair level 39 that makes the game so luck based that it simply isn't worth playing more than it already was. Don't play this game, let Qbert die the sad pathetic death he deserves not even fitting a dog.
To be sure, I think it's neat that Q*Bert's developers decided to bring the classic game to a generation who've probably never seen it outside of being a side character in Wreck-It Ralph a few years ago. And I'm grateful that they didn't try and give it some insane makeover, a la Bomberman. But they also didn't demonstrate why the game had to be reborn — sorry, "Rebooted" — for the modern era, when everything about it makes it clear it probably should've stayed in the past.
Q*Bert Rebooted is definitely one character that deserved to be rebooted into today's gaming world, but while it does retain many of the classic Q*Bert elements, spotty controls and inexcusably bad load times make the game extremely mediocre.
It sucks to say it, but the frustrating controls flat out ruin any enjoyment I had with Q*Bert Rebooted. The path that you take throughout each stage is so important to Q*Bert and having controls that don’t cooperate in that respect really sucks.
Even if the game featured stable controls, the overall package is still mediocre at best. But with the bad controls, compounded by lackadaisical graphics and boring gameplay, Q*bert: Rebooted never had the potential to shine anyway. Q*bert, old friend, you deserve better.
Nothing redeems this game. It's ugly as sin, it fails to understand what made the original classic compelling and though it includes the original classic, it is a neutered version of it.
The Rebooted version is drab, with the graphics
being uninspired, and ugly looking.
They made one of the most colorful games in history
look like it was left out in the sun to fade for 25 years.
It's mostly the same pattern design with texture-less
polygon cubes over and over again.
They should have taken a clue from the excellent SNES
Q*bert 3 and changed the blocks into something interesting
(Hats, teeth, gift boxes, etc) which changes from round to round.
The controls are the worst though. You can almost never
count on moving Q*bert in the right direction.
It's a miracle if you don't jump to your death 50%
of the time. Just terrible!
Then you have the same 2 annoyingly short looped
song over and over again.
They sound like cheap public domain music tunes, bought cheap!
Then you have the classic version of Q*bert which they
somehow managed to butcher. The graphics are
actually both too sharp and too blurry at the same time
it's quite a feat! The same terrible controls which apply
to the Rebooted version are here as well.
After dying over and over again I started to wonder if it was just me
so I started up the Sony PSN release of Q*bert on the PS3
and I was able to clear 4 boards in a row without dying.
Why couldn't they build controls like this?!
It's a shame they removed the better version from
The PSN Store to make way for this.
What else... Oh yeah. There is NO PAUSE! on the classic game. Maybe it's a feature to make it like games
from before the Atari 5200 when a PAUSE button was such a new feature it was even mentioned in the commercials. Instead of pausing the game, if you press the circle button at any point during the game
it instantly closes your game and brings you back to the game menu. I had a great game going and
mistakenly hit the button? Tough @!?$&#! Start over!
Hope you weren't expecting high score leader board
support. In fact, there isn't even a way to enter your
initials or show high scores like in the original version.
They somehow just cut it right out of the emulated arcade
original.
Poor Q*bert deserves better than this!
I usually don't bother writing reviews, but I had to for Qbert Rebooted. The game is essentially broken. The controls are that bad. Many times I pushed the joystick just to see Qbert sit there. Other times I would push in a direction only for Qbert to jump off screen to his death. I even tried holding my controller diagonally and still had the same results. The controls are just bad. Save yourself the cash and avoid this stinker. Qbert deserved a better port than this.
SummaryOne of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful arcade games of the 1980s is back in its Classic pixel perfect 2D form, and a re-imagined Reboot version with state of the art 3D game-play and graphics that remain faithful to the original concept.