Title Crush Date 06.30.2007 Genre Puzzle Platform Sony PSP Developer Sega of America Publisher Sega of America

Innovation in gaming is a strange thing, especially in this day and age. We've more or less run the gamut on new ways to feel, sense, control or touch our games outside of some kind of attachment to smell the action. We've traced, shredded, wiggled, button mashed and stomped our ways through a variety of things all meant to give us a different perspective on how we play our games. Enter Crush, a PSP puzzle game from Sega whose selling point is to literally force you to look from a different perspective.

The concept is simple: Each stage is comprised of the lost marbles for our protagonist, Danny, to find. Once he finds half of the marbles in the stage, he can make his way to the exit, thus moving on to the next stage. Nothing we haven't seen since the pre-NES era. The hook, however, is that the stage can be ‘crushed' into 2D in a variety of ways. Either from side to side, front to back, or even from top down. This change allows Danny to reach Marbles that may not have been reachable before, make his way to the seemingly impossible to get to exit, and more that I'll get to in a bit. Before that, though, let's talk a bit on how Danny got into this predicament in the first place.

Storyline isn't exactly something one thinks about when they think about the puzzle genre, but the puzzle/platformer crossbreed, since the days of Bubble Bobble and The Adventures of Lolo, do have stories. Crush, instead of dealing with cute characters trapped in brightly colored fantasy world like the standard fare, takes a very graphic novel approach to its storytelling. Told through a variety of still shot cut-scenes drawn in a style reminiscent of Jhonen Vasquez (The namesake of Invader's Zim and Johnny The Homicidal Maniac) and decent voice acting, we learn that Danny has been going through bouts of insomnia lately. Through some undefined means he comes to know a Dr. Reubens, the man who claims his remarkable system known as C.R.U.S.H. will help him sort out his emotional trouble and find out the reasons for his disorder. The cut-scenes are a well deserved break from the gameplay, with interesting characters and humorous dialogue to make them not feel shoe horned in.

The game controls like a dream. Going in, I expected the usual potholes games like this have where they offer realism in the movement in place of smooth controls. I mean, realism is nice but it makes your character come off as a doofus as they consistently hit a wall when trying to turn around or clumsily skidding to a halt or taking two more steps than they need to take when you try to get them to stop. (Just look at the Prince in the original Prince of Persia) Crush controls like any good game should, with Danny turning, moving and stopping on a dime. The game was kind enough to make it so you can't go running off the edge (not that the same could be said for jumping…), however the incentive that Danny's going to do exactly what you want him to do, shows that the developers know what they're doing.

To keep the stages interesting and varied, there're a number of obstacles, blocks and enemies that litter the world and do different things depending if the game is 2D or 3D. Ghost blocks are solid in 3D, but simply background colors when in 2D. Thin ledges that look like decoration become valid platforms in 2D. Cockroaches get crushed against walls going into 2D, bees roll up and become balls that can be rolled on and stepped on safely, and etc. forth. It adds a nice layer of strategy and keeps things from being boring.

If collecting marbles isn't enough, there're also 2 hidden objects in each stage: A puzzle piece and a trophy. Puzzle pieces open up images in the image gallery, which is pretty standard fare. Concept art, pictures of the developers and things like that. The trophy is what makes up the game's replay value. It unlocks trophy stages, which let you play the real version of that stage: One with a time limit and a specific number of crushes you are allowed to use. There's also a grading system on each stage (Trophy or not) which gives you something to shoot for, though I have no idea if you get anything for accomplishing an A on every stage other than bragging rights. Very few people will get any higher than a C outside of the first couple of stages on their first play through.

So where does the game fall? Well, really, as a puzzle game, it doesn't. It's about as entertaining as you can get, but it's still a puzzle game. That means it's not really everyone's thing, and if you weren't into the genre before, you're not going to be into it now. It's a niche genre that's not for everyone. However, if this all does sound appealing to you, the game launched at a budget price of only 29.99, a fair price for the currently lampooned prices of your usual PSP game. It's a fair shake for a great puzzle game with something a bit more than a gimmick, and an awesome presentation.

Game Score

A-

Reviewed By: Adrian Sandoval