PlayStation 4 Critic Reviews

It’s easy to recommend Q*Bert: Rebooted to both returning fans and new ones alike. The PlayStation release allows for choice of play either in its classic mode or the more modern version for those who want something a little easier on the eyes.

It's a quaint little curio for fans of arcade games, then, but it's not exactly a must have.

The game, despite its problems, can be fun in small doses and certainly provides plenty of old school challenge.

Q*Bert Rebooted is definitely one character that deserved to be rebooted into today's gaming world, but while it does retain many of the classic Q*Bert elements, spotty controls and inexcusably bad load times make the game extremely mediocre.

An effective if not particularly ambitious or polished reboot of an arcade classic, Q*Bert Rebooted is as accessible as the franchise has ever been but offers little in the way of significant new additions to keep players hooked in the long term and remains hobbled by a lack of leaderboards.

To be sure, I think it's neat that Q*Bert's developers decided to bring the classic game to a generation who've probably never seen it outside of being a side character in Wreck-It Ralph a few years ago. And I'm grateful that they didn't try and give it some insane makeover, a la Bomberman. But they also didn't demonstrate why the game had to be reborn — sorry, "Rebooted" — for the modern era, when everything about it makes it clear it probably should've stayed in the past.

It sucks to say it, but the frustrating controls flat out ruin any enjoyment I had with Q*Bert Rebooted. The path that you take throughout each stage is so important to Q*Bert and having controls that don’t cooperate in that respect really sucks.

Not being able to reliably move in diagonal directions makes certain levels near impossible. Q*Bert deserves better.

Even if the game featured stable controls, the overall package is still mediocre at best. But with the bad controls, compounded by lackadaisical graphics and boring gameplay, Q*bert: Rebooted never had the potential to shine anyway. Q*bert, old friend, you deserve better.

Nothing redeems this game. It's ugly as sin, it fails to understand what made the original classic compelling and though it includes the original classic, it is a neutered version of it.