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Crush Review
Written by Elmer Concepcion on Monday, June 4, 2007
Wholly unique experience; Excellent and fiendishly difficult puzzles can keep you up for days.
Poor jumping controls; May lose sleep over it.
Very few games push envelopes. Only a few operate on multiple dimensions. Crush is one of those rare gems which have given me a real world epiphany. For the past few days, I've had trouble sleeping. Not because I wasn't tired, nor was it because I couldn't physically bring myself to sleep. No, the trouble started when I got hooked into Crush, and it's a game where you play Danny, an insomniac using C.R.U.S.H. to cure himself and get a good nights sleep. My eyes shifted blearily from the glow of the PSP screen to my window, the rosy fingers of dawn were creeping across the deep blue sky. I had come to live the definition of irony.
Cognitive Regression Utilizing pSychiatric Heuristics is the machine attached to our hero Danny, a normal guy with some deep problems. In the machine (C.R.U.S.H.) we delve into his mind to help him find some lost marbles, face his fears, and unlock his latent memories. His mind is a mess, a chaos of bricks and blocks floating in twisted versions of reality. In between the beginning and the end of every stage where a good nights sleep awaits are bottomless falls, impossible hurdles and mazes, and monsters made from the roaches and slugs of our world, all looking to wake you up and foil your day. But the machine does more than just give this shape to his addled brain, it gives him the means to crush it and turn any 3D mess into a potentially more navigable 2D mess. Therein you have the mechanic for one of the most unique and literally mind bending puzzle/platforming games in existence.
A little more explanation is necessary. To the lucky people that have experienced the recent Super Paper Mario, the concept is a little familiar. In both games, with the click of a button you can shift the playing field from 2D to 3D. This technique can reveal hidden passages around impassible blocks, or build bridges from pieces hundreds of yards apart, or turn a tower into a flat pancake. But unlike Super Paper Mario, the power you wield in Crush is near limitless; having the added advantage of camera control gives you the ability to crush the 3D world into a dizzying array of different 2D worlds. With taps of the d-pad you move the camera in 90 degree increments, including a top down view, so if a crush from one side leaves you with an impassible wall, a crush from the top could make getting across a snap. Should you accidentally crush yourself in between two solid blocks or uncrush back floating in space, an automatic safety uncrushes or crushes the world back so you can get back to your puzzle solving. It's even your weapon against some of the harmful creatures; squishing giant cockroaches with this power is as disgusting as it is satisfying. In the 3D world, everything pretty much behaves as it should with all blocks being solid, but in 2D, each block or wall behaves either as passable background, solid blocks, or floor. Add to that the number of special powers or hazards which activate in 2D, and the whole thing becomes dauntingly complex.
To answer and solve some of the most taxing and clever of the puzzles is exciting and always personally rewarding. Further more, I've actually found myself engaged enough in Danny's story that I looked forward to unlocking the next comic book styled cut scene. A good story is a very rare treat in a puzzler and serves as further motivation to conquer the next stage. But very quickly the early charms of the game can lead to frustration. Even in the early stages, the experience becomes exponentially more difficult the longer you play as answers and pathways become increasingly obtuse or older solutions offer little to no insights to future problems. In that way, I feel you never really begin to get better at the game though the game itself gets harder and harder.
2D or 3D? Crush wants to know how you look at the world.
That in itself is no real knock against a skillfully crafted puzzle game like Crush, maybe its more to do with my own headaches and mental inadequacies keeping me from finding the right answer. But the dodgy platforming is almost criminal. The PSP's analog nub has never been the best control for precision jumping, and its lead me to more pitfalls than I'm comfortable with in a puzzle game. What I would give for Danny to be able to catch himself before falling off a ledge. Checkpoints are generously abundant, though the experience is still off putting.
Sometimes I've simply solved the puzzle accidentally, or through lengthy trial and error. Crushing and uncrushing from all kinds of angles and just wandering about waiting for a burst of inspiration can be unpleasant. And there is a hint system in place where you can ask for a hint at anytime. This isn't as fun as cleverly finding out the soloution yourself, but the hints are generally obvious reminders and not exactly a cheat sheet. Most certainly, all these frustrations can be attributed to my addled brain not being quick enough on the uptake. And indeed, what I've found most pleasantly surprising is that the solutions felt easier after I've just put the PSP down, and had a good night's sleep. I'd come back to the puzzle with a fresh mind and a new perspective. Again, wonderful irony.
After every stage a scoring system ranks you on the time it took to solve the stage, the number of crushes you've used, the marbles you've found and so on. It certainly opens it up for those crazed perfectionists to memorize the bizarre paths for the best most brag-worthy grades, but I must admit this kind of play is no where near as fun as more puzzles. Fun for some perhaps, and certainly there's a joy to having completed a stage with 100% of your marbles. But worse are the Trophy challenges which are so hard and demanding requiring precision and efficiency down to the second to collect every marble and reach the exit is simply masochistic. Again, some people will like that stuff. I myself liked finding the bits of unlockable concept art hidden in the stages; that's a reward I can get behind. Replaying the game is questionable, since solving the same puzzle a second time is not nearly as exciting as its first. But the first time through is a fairly lengthy trip, while the early stages are solvable with a few minutes, most of them can take upwards of half an hour. The latter few could takes hours upon hours.
Developer Zoe Mode, formerly Kuju Brighton, has developed in Crush a genre bending and categorically difficult to place experience. Certainly a real gem for puzzle fanatics, and anyone looking for something really new and really unique for their PSP has gotten themselves a real head turner. While the extreme difficulty can lead to your own case of sleep deprivation, by the time you're done you'll be so engrossed in the Crush mechanic that you'll find yourself looking at your day to day life wondering how you can crush your view into flat 2D spaces. Trust me, I was.
posted June 5, 2007