PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient

Written by Matt Swider  on September 05, 2006

Review: What's Your PQ gAuGE?

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There are many practical ways to measure your intelligence, and while beating a video game isn't widely considered an official gauge of academia, D3 Publisher puts your brain to the test anyway in its new problem-solving game for PSP. PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient is a puzzle game in which you must navigate through 100 У3D questions.Ф In layman's terms that means 100 levels. The answer to these questions is found in traveling from Point A to Point B while avoiding and using the obstacles in between. The rate in which you finish and the amount of moves you make to get there is supposed to indicate how smart you are. The calculation is by no means scientific or the fun part of playing this game. Reaching the end of a well-designed puzzle, not the resulting score is the real reward.

PQ has a bare-bones VR theme akin to the movie Tron and repetitive techno music to match. The first stage begins with a simple puzzle involving two platforms and a bunch of boxes stacked in between. You must move them to form a staircase and reach the top level. The succeeding stages are much more complicated as they add new obstacles like conveyer belts, lasers, switches, escalators, revolving doors and security guards. The most troublesome of the group are the guards. They're mobile and one false move could spell failure. But, a majority of the levels are about your quick logic as opposed to your quick reflexes.

Failure can also come when you need to rotate the camera by pressing the Right or Left shoulder buttons. Although the perspective automatically shifts to a location that it perceives to be adequate, it's not always the perfect and the manual camera can be jolty. Thus, using the camera can sometimes trip you up and cost you time that you don't want to spend or moves that you don't want to make.

As in any test, you can cheat to overcome the inability to find a proper answer. Here, you simply quit the game instead of restarting the stage and then enter back into the test. This allows you to begin again with the time and move count restarted. There's no proctor or teacher to catch you, either, so no need to make sneaky faces when performing this obvious way out of trouble.

Once you reach the end of the 100 levels, the game is all about improving your PQ score and uploading your best efforts on the Global PQ Website to show that you can outsmart other УgiftedФ gamers. It's not the biggest incentive to go back and play compared to a versus mode, but it's still something to bring you back for more.