The succession of Playstation franchises being crammed onto one of those tiny UMD’s continues as IQ Mania, the latest in the Intelligent Qube series, is soon to arrive on Sony’s powerful PSP. For those lacking in knowledge in the series’ heritage, Intelligent Qube hit the original Playstation way back in ’97 and the masses proceeded to overlook the puzzle based masterpiece in order to purchase whatever gorgeous looking franchise just happened to be released that week. Luckily for us then, considering the mini-fortune second hand copies of this idealistic gem now commands, Sony has seen fit to release a brand new handheld iteration to while away those hours spent with the common man on the various forms of public transport.

With the relative success of Lumines still fresh in our minds, it seems that the puzzle genre has once again found its home on the PSP. The main bone of contention with the genre’s usually simplistic tones has been the high price, for what’s perceived as a lack of depth. Hence, splashing out the required cash to play a ‘simplistic’ title on your huge 50” HD-ready monster of a TV is something few are willing to do. Yet the lower price-point of a handheld title seems to tie in with Joe Public’s perfect price-point quite ideally.

In Intelligent Qube, you take the role of a tiny human figure, stood atop a huge number of 3D blocks, seemingly floating in space. However, a selection of said blocks come closing in towards you at rapid speed, eagerly wanting to push you over the edge and cause your untimely demise - hence you need to utilise your meagre powers in order to blast your way a path through the onslaught, and come out to the other side unscathed. To destroy these on-coming hordes of darkness, you’re required to place down tiny little markers, and then ‘detonate’ them in order to destroy the block above. It’s as simple as manoeuvring yourself to the right spot, pressing once to set the marker, and another to detonate as soon as the right block lands atop your marker of death.

Of course, things aren’t quite as simple as merely blasting a straight path, I mean, where would the fun be in that? If you happen to detonate and destroy one of the few ‘green blocks’ that are a part of the cube shaped onslaught, then a green ‘trap square’ is created, which when detonated can destroy a large chunk of the surrounding cubes, giving you more space to work with, and a path forward with which to proceed.

So far, so simple. Unfortunately for our tiny little fellow (which you can change into a multitude of other player avatars. We’ll let you find those out for yourselves) also included are black blocks, which if destroyed, causes one of the rows of blocks behind you which you utilise to meander around on as you ponder your next move fall and crumble away, leaving you less space and much less time. As easy as it sounds to destroy only the right coloured blocks, the strict time-limited gameplay caused by the forever closing in assault, and lack of room to move around on behind you, culminate in a puzzler virtually unrivalled in brain power required to proceed.

Like any good puzzle title, there’s a simple, yet depth filled scoring system to figure out. Clearing an area without destroying any black blocks gives you a bonus. As does destroying all the green blocks in each stage, and beating the ‘par score’. As you progress through over 7000 levels included in this PSP iteration (a culmination of adding all the I.Q, I.Q Final, and I.Q Remix + stages together, as well as 100 Attack modes) things obviously get much more difficult, with larger numbers of blocks needed to be destroyed, more black cubes thrown into the mix, and even less time to figure out how to proceed. If you do happen to perish before the end of a stage, you’re given an I.Q score that ultimately rates your skills. Ultimately causing you re-think the way you utilise your meagre amount of gaming time.

Of course things aren’t quite as attractive, gaudy, and bauble-encrusted as perhaps the 'Pimp My Ride' generation expects, yet work with sublime aplomb. The uncluttered interface, the montone looks, and the lack of a bright colour-scheme add up to a visual style that while may not make the most of the PSP’s potential, certainly works heavily in the titles favour.

It’s safe to say that the short-term nature of a puzzle based leveller like I.Q Mania works to absolute perfection on the PSP. And with so many levels to complete, it’s obvious that you’ll be more than able to fill as many toilet breaks as you could ever hope for with IQ action. Of course, it’s still the same marmite gaming experience of old, but the short trek to the small screen may just open up IQ goodness to the masses.