Platform: PSP

Genre: Puzzle

Number of Players: 1

Known in Japan as: Intelligent License

While many have probably forgotten about it, back when Sony only had the PlayStation, there was a rather unique puzzle game released known as I.Q. or Intelligence Quotient. This game however actually measured player intelligence based on how quickly and how well they could complete the games puzzles, and it quickly became a sleeper hit. There was talk of a sequel, but it never came to be, at least not until now.

PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient is a different kind of puzzle game, but anyone who has played I.Q is already quite familiar with how this game plays itself out. There isn’t any color matching, no shooting orbs into others, and no rotation of items of any sort. In fact, there also isn’t anything like destroying enemies, jumping on things, or anything else of that nature. Instead, this puzzle game is designed to test your intelligence, and if you hadn’t already assumed that simply by the title, this probably isn’t going to be the game for you.

P.Q. features over 100 puzzles, and the objective to these sounds fairly straight forward; make it to the exit. Yes, that certainly sounds simple enough, but I can assure you, it’s anything but that. Each of the stages is drastically different and has a variety of things to either impede or improve your progress. You may be using blocks to build stairs, trying to navigate through conveyor belts that move in a single direction, avoid guards that are patrolling the stage, or even finding switches to open other portions of the stage itself. Even that might sound easy, but there is also a time limit that will being from the instant you start, and if you need to begin again, it doesn’t reset itself. Time really is of the essence here, and it gets even more challenging as the game continues.

I’m sure some cheaters are already thinking, “Gee, I’ll just pause and I can take my time to get out of the stages.” Wrong answer. P.Q. won’t allow you to pause at all. Once the level beings, you need to start thinking, and fast if you want to get a good score and not look like a complete moron. If you think that you can simply go through the game and randomly try everything in order to succeed, you’re again incorrect. Each move deducts point from your score, so moving to one square and deciding that wasn’t the right thing to do is going to cost you. These are logic puzzles and the goal is to test just how smart you really are, or how smart you THINK you are.

Once you’ve finished a section of puzzles you will be allowed to go back and play through them again, but there’s another element included with this game. You can post your score online, something that can either result in some earned gloating or a moment or two of remorse when you see that your score really isn’t that good after all.

Although this is a next generation title, the graphics aren’t designed in such a way that they are going to be overly impressive, and yet they really are the ideal way to present this game. The stages are simply barren landscapes that you might equate to the grid look of a movie like Tron to Star Trek’s holodeck when there is no program running. Your characters, and others in the game, are nothing more that solid, white shadows with no physical features to speak of. It sounds a little bland but trust me, not only does it work, were the game any more complex in the graphics department, things would be distracting and that’s really the last thing that you want with this game.

P.Q. really comes down to how much do you like to think? Are you above the average gamer and at times you want to really have your brain teased? If so, this is going to be the prefect game to add to your PSP library. If you’re more inclined to hurry through things, kill everything that comes along, and have the patience level of a child with ADD, this definitely is not going to be your type of game at all. P.Q will separate the men from the boys and the thinkers from those that don’t necessarily need their grey matter for much of anything.

-mike-