Remember The Empire Strikes Back? The boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, protesting Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Airplane? Defender, Battlezone and Pac-Man? Zork? John Lennon’s murder? Iron Maiden’s debut? AC/DC’s “Back in Black” ? “Disco Sucks?” (granted that was on a sign in 79’s Disco Demolition Night but the sentiment still rings true) Mount St. Helens eruption? The US ice hockey team beating the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics? Who shot J.R.? Well all of these were in 1980, not just the 80’s but the turn of the decade. There was another thing that debuted in 1980 and that was the Rubik’s Cube. Invented in ‘74 by a Hungarian sculptor, it was sold to Ideal Toys in 1980. As Wikipedia describes it – In a classic Rubik’s Cube, each of the six faces is covered by 9 stickers, among six solid colors (traditionally white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow). A pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colors. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be a solid color.
Since it has been so popular since it’s inception, it’s a no-brainer to think it could be turned into a video game. And one was made for Xbox Live Community Games in the form of Cubage, by FV Productions. According to the author it was the first game to pass peer review, not only that but it’s got it’s own Wikipedia page! Okay so for the game. The interface is a little odd, not terrible. You rotate with the left and right triggers, and the right thumb stick. You quit with the start button (Which is odd since usually you would hit the back button instead), and read the instructions with the back button. As you rotate the cube there’s a selector which is essentially a lit up square on one side, you then use the D-Pad to rotate the actual column that the selector is on.
The graphics are adequate, there’s a neat fingerprint effect on each of the squares. The music is sort of generic. There’s not much to the visuals and audio. There’s just only so much one can say about a video game version of the Rubik’s Cube. It’s there it works. You don’t get to peel stickers, or snap off blocks to put them in the right order though. I don’t really see why you would pay money for this when you could just by the real thing, and the real thing doesn’t need an Xbox 360 to play it. Sorry for the terrible screenshots, I was experimenting with my new video camera which has still image functions.
Final Analysis: Sorry, but I would save my money. You could just download the trial, and try it for 8 minutes, just to try it out.
Name: Cubage
Developer: FV Productions
Price: 200 MSP / $2.50 USD
Where you can get it: Xbox Live Community Games. on the Xbox 360
Tags: Cubage, FV Productions, game, games, independent, Indie, xbla, xblig, xbox, xbox live, xbox live community games