Crush set to offer unique gaming experience on PSP

"Crush tells the story of Dan, a man with a lifetime of unresolved issues and bottled up emotions that has turned him into a nervous insomniac who is too tired to turn his life around. Desperate for a cure, he turns to hypnosis. It is during this state that he is given one last chance to sort through the wreckage of his past, before he loses the last thing he has – his sanity."

The quotation marks should have given you a pretty definitive clue of the fact the above words aren't ours, but rather handily (okay, lazily) cut-and-pasted from the press release that's just landed in our inbox.

Were we clever enough, we'd argue that this article's unimaginative opening is in fact deliberately ironic. That's because, both on paper and in the accompanying trailer (click 'Watch It!' below to, err, watch it), Crush seems keen to establish itself as one of the more inventive and ingenious games of recent years.

Developed by Kuju Brighton (recently in the news because of the cancellation of its similarly intriguing rhythm-happy game, Traxion) and due this summer, Crush is a puzzle game set within a complex, hypnotic 3D world that can be 'crushed' into 2D form and back again whenever Dan stomps his right foot.

Far from it just being a gimmick to get the marketing department drooling, this game mechanic forms the core of the experience, with a player able to solve otherwise impossible challenges and unlock secret items that were previously unattainable within the 3D environment.

Unreachable platforms on the other side of the stage suddenly require nothing more than a simple step in order to be stood on, while the floating coloured orbs and puzzle pieces that litter the levels become yours for the taking, provided you apply a little spatial thinking.

Navigation through stages should thus prove to be a fluid, constant process of crushing and uncrushing the world in order to reach their goal.

The appeal of the game's unique dynamic is likely to be the demands it places on players, requiring a very different and potentially taxing mental approach in order to process the gameworld information in – crucially – both dimensional representations.

Success in Crush, if you remember as far back as the first paragraph, means ensuring Dan doesn't lose his mind. Even if that means risking yours in the process. Not that we'd have it any other way: life without risk or challenge is invariably monotonous.

Provided it plays as well as the trailer and Sega's PR department currently suggest, Crush, could be turn out to be something of a winner for the PSP. It is certainly the kind of game Sony's handheld should be hosting and we're delighted to discover it.

Let's hope it lives up to our expectations, eh? Click 'Track It!' to learn more when we do.