Crush

Danny's head is one twisted place...

The 1001 write up for the PlayStation Portable's puzzle-platformer Crush makes absolutely sure that this is a hidden gem, overlooked by seemingly everyone, and that because nobody bothered with it, its interesting mechanics haven't been hoovered up and used by other, prettier games.

Whoever wrote the blurb must really like Crush, a game where you guide sleep-deprived (indeed, insomniac) Danny through his own mind to stamp out his problems from within, changing perspectives by crushing the level from 3D to 2D and back.

Never mind Danny - have I got my own head screwed on straight for this?

Fun Times

I've got a lineup of PSP titles to my left here, just waiting for their chance to shine. Some of them I've played through, having been interested enough in them to play them at the time, and others have been sourced specifically because of this 1001 list, including Crush, a game I've absolutely no memory of from the late 2000s. Then again, I can't remember a whole lot of buzz about the PSP in the late 2000s, so maybe I glossed over any praise it got in the magazines.

Danny cannot sleep, and desperation for a fix has lead him to Dr Ruebens and his Cognitive Regression Utilizing pSychiatric Heuristics device, or 'C.R.U.S.H.' for short.

As you can tell from the screenshots, these cartoon cutscenes aren't exactly animated, but they're voiced pretty well by a young man at his wit's end, and a cooky foreign doctor with the cure he's looking for. But what will we actually be doing to help Danny get to sleep?

The 15-minute long tutorial can be summed up more or less by this one image. We're going to be crushing the 3D world into 2D, like this:

This allows us to walk around in 3D, collecting lost marbles (what else would you need to collect inside a brain? Emotional bagga-oh, wait...), and then picking a view to crush into, either side on or top-down. Danny can walk on some surfaces in both 3D and 2D, and others will block his progress depending on which world he's walking in.

So far, so puzzley.

Switches, moveable objects, enemies... as you can imagine, it's not just a game about crushing the world into shape, but about navigating it in the right way to keep Danny in one piece and make it to the exit gate before anything terrible happens.

Collect the marbles, open the exit, get to the exit. Good?

For those of you put off by the purple void, don't worry. Actual levels take place in an abstract city, presumably something that Danny recognises and feels comfortable in - it's his mind, after all. That means the blocks take on the vague shapes of buildings and the puzzle hides away just a little bit, blurring into the backgrounds.

You're ranked on speed, the number of crushes used, bonus collectables gathered and so on, but you're probably going to be a bit uneasy at first. If Danny can't exist somewhere after crushing, the crush won't take place, so you'll have to move him or the camera to give yourself a better chance.

It's moving the camera that I kept forgetting about, especially viewing the levels from above and crushing them flat from that perspective. If you've enabled it, there is a hint system for these kinds of situations.

Frustrations

As the game went on - and by that, I mean 'as I got into the second and third levels' - I was starting to get bored of Crush. I'm well aware that not all of its tricks and gimmicks will appear early on - we've not had to run away from a cockroach or solve a navigation puzzle before and alarm clock rings, for example - but I just found myself wishing there was something more interesting to this game.

Sure, it's nice to be able to solve a puzzle: I can stand on this trash can... I can stand on this trash can, of course! But the whole waddling around Danny's mind in search of a cure for insomnia is doing nothing for me, nor is the art style, nor is the gameplay.

In another setting, a more abstract one, perhaps, I can see myself going through more of a game like this, where you flatten your world to open up new possibilities. But I don't have another, more abstract, setting to do this in. All I've got is Crush, and I'm a bit bored with it.

I, too, want to get away from it, Danny. Only the 'it' is your game in my case.

Final Word

I'm sure, for the right person, Crush is a great game. Under different circumstances, it could even be a great game for me. As presented, though, it's merely alright, but not really for me. I can't see myself pushing through to see what happens or how it gets more complex. It's just not sparking anything in me.

I could joke that it's putting me to sleep instead, but it's not that bad at all. It's well put together, though it looks a little all over the place, and there's a Nintendo 3DS version, should that take your fancy instead.

I'd recommend giving it a go, sure. Sticking around will be entirely your choice, however.

Fun Facts

User-generated levels were planned but not implemented in time, and never came to be. Nor did a sequel, though the Nintendo 3DS' CRUSH3D (cute) does follow a different plot.

Crush, developed by Zoë Mode, first released in 2007.

Version played: PlayStation Portable, 2007, via emulation.