What would you do if you were unable to sleep for most of your life? According to this very original PSP title you’d get institutionalized first, after which a complex device named C.R.U.S.H. would delve deep into your psyche and help you resolve the problem (by the way, the S in C.R.U.S.H. stands for psyche). But sitting in a room with a digital shrink isn’t what most would consider fun, so obviously there must be something I’m not telling you…

You can flatten the world at any time

I won’t deny it, I’m hooked on C.R.U.S.H. For the past few days, all I have been doing in my spare time is trying to finish every level with a perfect score. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s start at the beginning. C.R.U.S.H. is a puzzle game/platformer, with a heavy emphasis on the first and almost no block jumping whatsoever. The goal in every level is to pick up enough spheres to unlock the exit and then haul your ass to the said exit. The levels are usually very small, so in theory you should be able to complete every single one in a matter of minutes.

So far so good, but as the tutorial manages to illustrate very well, sometimes the part of the level with the exit is either far of in the distance, or way higher than your current position. And more often than not there is no path leading from where you are standing to where you want to be. Flying is out of the question and regular jumping is only good for small gaps and jumping on low platforms. So how is one supposed to get to the other part of the level? By crushing of course!

Looking at the screenshots the game looks like a typical 3d platformer, with your standard six possible directions of movement (just to make sure we are on the same page – forward, backward, left, right, up, down), where climbing and dropping to a lower platform bear the normal restrictions. The catch is that you can flatten the world at any time by pressing the left shoulder button. “Crushing” the world makes the game world become two dimensional, flattening everything into the same plane, depending on your view point. Because of that you can only turn the camera around in 90° steps or change to a top-down view.

On paper this sounds rather complicated and completely unnatural. I will have to agree with the later, as it took a while before I got used to the whole 3d/2d thinking. And yes, playing the game can be complicated, but thanks to some superb level design you are presented with gradually more challenging levels, so you have enough time to learn the ropes and adapt your thinking. And adapt you will, as it won’t take long before you start thinking of a level as a web of intertwined mini-levels. While in theory you can only get 5 2d layers (top, front, back, left, right) you will sometimes come across levels where a certain camera angle results in various layers (depending on where you stand at the moment of crushing).

The number of dimensions is not the only thing that separates the crushed world from the uncrushed one. Every single block in the game has its characteristics. Some can only be walked through in 2d while some become rock solid when crushed. Very thin blocks become invisible when crushed from the side and are only useful when crushed face down. Slopes are a one way street unless crushed from the top, where they act just like any other level surface. The list goes on, but these are the main elements of the 40 odd levels.

You’ll spend most of your time in the game trying to figure out how to move from point A to point B by jumping in and out of 2d mode, but that’s not all your brain will have to digest. As with any self-respecting platformer you’ll be forced to push boulders around, making makeshift platforms to get to a higher place. The catch is that just like with the rest of the game, the 2d and 3d modes directly affect how far the boulder will roll (only solid blocks stop it in 2d). Due to the main characters phobia of roaches you will have to deal with them in certain levels as well. You can’t directly harm them and while you’ll be able to sometimes squash them with a rolling boulder, you’ll mostly have to try and crush them against a solid block, which knocks them out for as long as the level is crushed.

Try not to wake up

With only 40 levels getting through the game is a breeze. Sure, some of the levels can take up to half an hour to figure out, but in the end it won’t take you more than a full afternoon to burn through all the levels. 5-6 hours for a level based puzzle game isn’t all that uncommon, but I sure wished there were at least twice as many levels available. For the perfectionists there is always the hunt for the perfect score, where you try to use as few crushes as possible, you try not to wake up (AKA die) and you do your best to collect all the spheres and hidden goodies (which are sometimes not hidden at all, just hard to reach).

With the next-gen era not being so next-gen anymore games on the PSP tend to look dated. But as Blizzard proved with WoW, the art and design can often outweigh an archaic engine. C.R.U.S.H. is the perfect example of this. The levels look stunning, but not because of an insane amount of polygons. Instead, every level theme (out of the 4) has a soul. A twisted and demented soul, but a soul nonetheless. At times the game bears resemblances to Psychonauts, one of the best looking arcade games ever released. Sounds don’t lag far behind either. The music is, just like the visuals, very dark and twisted, but manages to maintain a certain happiness all the same. The voice acting isn’t half bad either, though you’ll only hear it in the tutorial levels and in the odd cinematic that is played every few levels (the videos are demented as well).

Conclusion

Most of you probably never heard of C.R.U.S.H. before reading this interview. Truth be told, I never heard of the game before getting my hands on it. With good PSP titles sorely missing, it’s easy to recommend C.R.U.S.H. That would be unfair though, as even if the PSP saw triple A titles daily, C.R.U.S.H. would still deserve the attention. In today’s world where reflexes count more than anything, C.R.U.S.H. is a breath of fresh air, delivering a unique and noggin provoking experience. By far the best puzzle game 2007 has seen so far.