Trash Panic

Trash Panic should be my favourite game ever. It's quirky, original, very Japanese and a puzzle game. Even the video trailers make it seem like God's new gift to puzzlers. It isn't until you actually play it that you realise that it could have been even better than you imagined, but in reality a frustrating waste of potential.

In Trash Panic you are charged with filling a giant trash can with a set volume of refuse to complete a level and proceed with the game. It is laid out and seems to play like Tetris but the puzzle part isn't to fit the pieces together to make them disappear, it's that that volume of trash is way larger than the can itself, and has to be broken down in any way possible to fit it all in. This includes smashing brittle objects into hard objects to break them, burning wooden items, crusing everything with very heavy objects, even blowing things up with dynamite. If items don't quite settle together, you can shake the six-axis to jostle the contents of the can until everything collapses into place.
Some really crazy stuff is being dumped in the bin, from acoustic guitars to katanas and each item has its own specific properties that have to be dealt with in order to break them down and make more room, which is displayed in the bottom right for your reference. Some items' physical properties even extend to being completely useless space (a sponge or dead fish) or being a complete liability unless handled carefully (bouncy balls and erasers). There's even treasure that has to be carefully placed near the bottom of the can so that it can be retrived by the little monster that monitors your progress. Doing so gives you an item useful for your current trash predicament, failure to do so throws a lot of trash in and around the can. The final thing to watch out for is 'Boss' items which have to be disposed of within a set time limit or another trash penalty is incurred. They are always bizarre, very hard to destroy and very large and ungainly if not disposed of. The game is over if three objects that have not been damaged slip out of the top of the can and hit the floor. Whether you finish the level or fail, you are then judged on how well you did. Points are added to your 'eco' balance for rescuing treasures and being green and added to your 'ego' balance for destroying treasures, burning things, blowing things up and being generally reckless. You're then ranked and either have to try again or proceed to the next level. As an added bonus there is a mission mode where you have to do set tasks and an offline multiplayer for two people to compete against each other.

So what is wrong with Trash Panic? Why isn't it a five star game? It sounds so fresh and appealing. The problem is that the game not only has an extremely steep difficulty curve, it has many rules, peculiarities and bugs that make the game even harder in an unfair and random way. Apart from a few set-piece items that go with each other, which items of trash you are given to put in the can is completely random and not balanced to what is already in play. For example, in one play-through you may have to destroy a piggy-bank boss item and then are given a dumbell which smashes it immediately, in another play-through of the same level the items you will get may be a pencil, then a fish, a sponge and a toilet roll in succession. You then fail the challenge and the bin is filled with lots more trash as punishment, which may lead to an immediate game over. This complete randomness affects more than the bosses, you can be extremely lucky with general items or just have the bin totally fill up with no help offered to bring the volume down. There's three difficulty levels, Sweets (easy), Main Course (normal) and an unlockable 'HELL' mode (I bet it is). However, Sweets mode is arguably more difficult than Main Course as though it forgoes having to deal with Boss items, it also takes away many useful items as well.
There are many bugs too, some combustable items decide they're not going to burn, the fire may bloow out independant of the complex oxygen and gas systems I won't bore you with and the most annoying thing is when an item that is not in any way bouncy, bounces right out of the trashcan at random and scores against one of your three strikes. Items may even spill out of the front of the can, as in they glitch through the supposed front wall and count as a strike too.

This brings me to the problem with immediacy. With a game this hard, if you know you're going to fail, you want to press start and immediately retry. Whether it's in the middle of a game or when you get a game over, the game takes between 15 to 40 seconds to reload. This seems like forever when you're used to all other puzzle games clearing the board immediately, you wonder what the heck it's doing, and occasionally it even hangs and you have to turn the console off then back on again.

The presentation is very poor, it makes you wonder why Trash Panic is over a gigabyte download. the menus are badly set out and confusing and there there is no interactive tutorial. With a game this conplex it is really needed, but there is only a text based instruction manual hidden in the 'options'. Only there are no options other than a language select, the in my opinion the music is hideous and repetitive but you don't even have the option to turn it off.

Trash Panic is a game that is for truly hard-core puzzle enthusiasts that have a lot of skill and patience. It is addictive in that it is a novel idea and you feel compelled to beat it, but the excessive complexities (many of which I haven't even mentioned), extreme difficulty level and unforgivable bugs make it hard to recommend to anyone else.