POSTED 23/8/11


CUBIXX HD

Laughing Jackal
PS3/PSN

Cubes, cubes, everywhere there’s cubes. Ice, sugar, Rubik’s, the office one we’re chained to several days a week, those smoothie ones that Maeve what’s-her-name can forcibly insert up her bottom as far as we’re concerned for interrupting the footy so regularly, Monty Burns’ car, interstellar Volvo drivers the Borg’s transport...

Yes, cubes, they’re nigh-on omnipresent. There’s certainly no avoiding the six-sided bastiches in the we-know-why-it’s-misspelled Cubixx HD, either, for, as the name may ever-so-slightly hint at, this thing’s more cubic than 808 State’s song of the same name that was also misspelled (we don’t know why on that one).

If you recall the much-respawned 1980s Taito arcade game Qix then you’ll have an idea both what to expect here, and as to why we know they spelled the name of this, well, let’s call it ‘homage’, as they did. Essentially, Cubixx HD is six screens of Qix sticky-taped to the various sides of a cube and all playable at once. Madness!

You shoom a little white spot around 50 levels of white lines (higher baby!) cutting a boxy swathe into a cube whilst avoiding escalating barrages of nasties from titular cubixxes to black clouds to bzzzzty power spikes, fuses and meteor strikes. Just like Qix, basically, but with the added (literal) twist of doing it times six to claim cutty-outtyness real estate and progress. Frenetic? Oh yeah.

Additional challenges for score, line length and such add more to the mix, as does a completely mental split-screen multiplayer mode for up to seven people. BYO DualShock.

Cubixx HD rocks harder than a granite Acca Dacca cranked to 12 (that’s one louder than 11, duh!). Sure, it’s as original as an Oasis cover band, and older school than Stick Rubbing 101, but it’s ace arcade awesomeness. Resistance is futile!

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