A SNOUT TO DIE FOR
I might be dimwitted, but I finally get it. He’s called Q*bert because he jumps on cubes. Get it? Cubes. Qu-bert. Very clever. By that logic, Q*bert: Rebooted is no longer a valid title and should instead launch a brand-new franchise called Hexagonal Prismert. Because he no longer jumps on cubes, but on hexagonal prisms. Get it? Hexagonal prisms. Hexagonal Prismert.
This is yet another entry in the long line of classic reboots that are easy to pick up and hard to put down. Because of that, the PlayStation 4 feels like an odd fit—phones or handhelds would make far more sense. Still, since Sony owned the Q*bert license through Columbia Pictures at the time, they might as well have made use of it. And it’s not as if their own handheld, the PlayStation Vita, was drowning in software.
If you’re unfamiliar with the original 1982 arcade game, Q*bert stars an orange ball with two oversized eyes, an elephant-like snout, and a pair of legs. He’s famous for his grawlix-filled tantrums whenever an enemy catches him. His task is simple: hop across a pyramid of tiles—hexagonal here, cubic in the original—and land on each one at least once to change its color. Once all tiles reach the required color, the stage is complete.
Various enemies spawn at fixed intervals, each with distinct behaviors, steadily escalating the chaos. The most infuriating are the green, sunglass-wearing pests that reverse tile colors, undoing your progress. Others include red bouncing balls, roaming alarms, and enemies that home in on your position—one of them charmingly named “Homer.” With three stages per level and forty levels total, the game has more longevity than you might expect.
All things considered, Q*bert:Rebooted is surprisingly… average. Or rather, perfectly serviceable—except for level 39, the penultimate stage, which is an unmitigated disaster. It deserves a place among the pantheon of “almost impossible” levels. Beating it requires a grotesque amount of luck paired with flawless planning. Its design is so cruel—or perhaps so careless—that intentionally plummeting to your death can sometimes be the optimal strategy.
Movement is handled by tilting the analog stick in a direction and pressing X. That extra step proves costly in high-pressure moments. With hexagonal platforms adding an extra layer of spatial ambiguity, a slight misalignment can send you leaping in the wrong direction—off the board, or straight into an enemy.
Playing Q*bert is an emotional tug-of-war: frequent frustration punctuated by genuine triumph. But the thing that makes me laugh most isn’t the gameplay—it’s the concept itself. Updating a roughly forty-year-old arcade mascot into a fully realized 3D model feels like an accomplished artist revisiting one of their childhood “head-and-feet” stick figures decades later. The hypothetical result would be a hyper-realistic human head with feet where the neck should be—and Q*bert: Rebooted isn’t far off.
Early video game characters were simple out of necessity. Hardware limitations restricted color, shape, and complexity, and gameplay systems had to be equally lean. The best of them—Pac-Man, Space Invaders—thrived by steadily ramping difficulty to match player skill. At their best, these games still work today as brief distractions… or lifelong obsessions, if you happen to be Billy Mitchell.
Aside from level 39, Q*bert: Rebooted does a respectable job of reviving that philosophy. When you pull off an improbable escape, it’s entirely on you. Modern games often offload such feats onto flashy animations. In Kingdom Hearts II, which I finished recently, you perform physically impossible stunts by repeatedly pressing X. It works, but it also requires a certain suspension of disbelief that you are the one making it happen.
Q*bert: Rebooted doesn’t hide behind spectacle. When you succeed, you can rest easy knowing it was your doing. You earned that perfect three-star clear. Its core mechanics are laid bare for anyone brave—or stubborn—enough to engage with them. By sticking rigidly to the original formula, the game limits its own potential, but at least it delivers exactly what it promises.
I was never a huge Q*bert fan growing up, which may explain why I find this reboot acceptable. A die-hard purist would likely find the controls and hexagonal layout sacrilegious. I’m not one of them. And since it came “free” with a PlayStation Plus subscription, I can’t complain too loudly.
The real question is this: now that I’ve beaten the campaign, will I play the classic version bundled with the game?
Tempting thought.
Now #*@$ off!
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