Kurushi PS1 Review

Kurushi otherwise known as intelligent Cube for the North American region it's a puzzle style video game that was released for the PlayStation in 1997 and would get subsequent releases in other regions where the player takes control of a character where you must run around a varying mix of platforms made up of cubes. 

And as cubes approach you have to mark each spot and you have to wait for the cube to roll on top of it and then you have to activate the marked spot for the cube to disappear and you have to keep doing this until you can wipe all of the cubes or the moving cubes off of the stage. 

It's one of those unusual games that can seem a bit tricky to understand at first but believe me when you do get into this game if you give it time it can be very very addictive and it's clear to see why the game was well received by critics in magazines and so forth and the game was a commercial success in Japan and it even won an excellence award for interactive art in 1997 from the Japan media arts festival. 

The crazy thing about this game is that it's it's not anything beautiful to look at, it's very very simplistic it's literally just a row of cubes and you just have to eliminate all of the cubes that are moving on the screen and the intricacies and the difficulty of each wave that you have to fend off gradually increases in its difficulty as you play through the game and you can use a variety of different combinations both trying to take out singular cubes or trying to wipe out a number of different cubes all in one go but you also do have to be mindful as there's a different set of cubes that are available with green cubes that once you've eliminated them, the spot that's next to them or the spot that you've eliminated them on, you can't eliminate any other cubes on that spot for the remainder of the wave. 

But then you also have to contend with black cubes and you want to avoid trying to eliminate them because if you do it will remove a row of the ground floor cubes which will make the difficulty of the level a lot more troublesome and challenging to say the least and that was one of the main things behind the game itself and even from my own personal experience looking back I played this game originally on a demo that came with the UK PlayStation magazine back in the summer of 1997 and I remember specifically because there was also a demo of PaRappa the Rapper and there was also another demo of rallycross that was on it as well and intelligent Cube or Kurushi was on it. It was funny because I remember buying the demo because my brother wanted to play a PaRappa the Rapper because he was a big kind of a music game fan he wouldn't really have been into games as such but the games that he did play would have been more along that style. 

I have Four Brothers but four of us were all mad in the video games but one of them really wasn't and if he did play games he wouldn't have played the more action focused games that we would have played. 

The likes of PaRappa the Rapper would have been more of his thing so we again we had a lot of fun with that demo and I wanted to play the rallycross demo that was my cup of tea if you will because I just love racing games and rally games. I have to say that I enjoyed that demo but the hidden gem of demo really was the intelligent cube or Kurushi and the crazy thing about it and that was the one thing that I can relate to because even looking at reviews and even what critics have said in magazines they all had the same issue with the game at the start because to look at the game originally it doesn't look like anything special it just looks like something that's quickly thrown together like as if it was just a pre-face alpha build of an early game concept. 

That's what it looks like and that's the final version of the game but when you look Beyond its simplicity of its graphics and the way that it plays it's very intricate and how it does utilize its elements and it's funny because even from reading all the reviews of the game the one thing that was apparent people did not like it visually at first once they got into it when they started playing it they were like oh this game doesn't look great and I'll be honest when I seen it myself I was like oh this game that is nothing special compared to anything else i had seen but again I sat down on it and I played it and then one game turned into two games once I figured out what to do which it is it can be quite frustrating when you're not sure of what to do because it isn't the most apparent of how to set everything up and the really good thing about this game is that it has a really good balance between achievement and frustration as it will test you on both ends of the spectrum. 

But I found myself I think with a lot of other guys that have mentioned in magazines, once you played one game it quickly dragged onto two games and three games.

You could find yourself spending hours playing the game. 

It gets so addictive that's the crazy thing about it and you can clearly see why the game was so well represented and was critically acclaimed both in magazines and with articles and even with reviews and it just increased its popularity that there was reiterated versions of the game and even sequels that were added later on not just on the PlayStation but on later consoles and so forth and even to a point that the game was also included of the lineup of catalogue games that would have been released alongside of the PlayStation classic miniature console that was released in 2018.

As it provides a good mix of puzzle solving and tactical style elements and while people often hate on the PlayStation classic and probably for good reason in some respects because it lacked in a lot of areas but the selection of games that were they are even though it was criticized but there was some games on that were deserving of being on the platform an intelligent cube is one of them because even though you do have a good mix of action, RPG, fighting, racing and many other elements, intelligent Cube or Kurushi fits in nicely with that because it appeals to a variety of different style of players. 

Even players that genuinely wouldn't play tactical puzzle solving games would enjoy this. 

That's the crazy thing about it, it just appealed to so many different people and it just is a good game. 

For as simple and all this it looks that's the crazy thing about it it's one of those games I kid you not that they say never judge a book by its cover which is so true and looks can be deceiving because this game doesn't look like anything special but it offers so much in terms of its playability and its addictive characteristics. 

It is just a really good solid title although it's not the most refined or finessed title, it does have its flaws it does have certain glitches but if you can overcome those little hurdles you will have a good solid addictive experience with this game let's just put it that way. I found that myself personally even though the demo itself back in the day wouldn't have been overly long but I found myself playing it for quite a while and finding myself always wanting to go back and playing and trying to get as far as I could in the demo. 

I know that you had access to a couple of different waves and it's just you kept playing it playing and playing I probably played that as much as I played the other games which I'll be honest which is crazy because I never would have intended to play that as much because I was originally wanting to play the likes of rallycross but then if only started playing kurushi just as much as pretty much any of them and even back in the day puzzle games were never really my thing but I found a newfound respect from playing this game and not all puzzle games are bad, some of them are really really good you just have to sit down and give a time and if you do this is one of those games that proves without a doubt that you will have a worthwhile experience if you do just give a time. 

Like even with it being raved about in magazines, I do remember quite well going into game stores when you were going in wanting to buy new games and there was always copies of the game on the store shelves so clearly it was selling well and it always was appealing to a lot of different players. 

It obviously is a very popular game and for good reason and it's why the game was also included on the PlayStation classic because again it is popular and it's just as playable today as it's ever been. 

Even going back to players now with recording this video I finally started getting addicted to it all over again it was tricky to get used to it at first but once I found out how to control it I found myself playing it for well over nearly two hours. I was only meant to play it for a couple of minutes just to record the video and I ended up playing it for way longer than I should have done but that's the addictive nature of this game that's what it does to you. 

It just is a really good solid fun experience if you give it time and I highly recommend you check out kurushi or intelligent cube as you will enjoy it especially if you do enjoy puzzle solving games and again I would love to know your thoughts on this game if you have played it yourself and if so what are your stories and what are your memories of this unique type of game, be sure to share it in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to Kurushi / Intelligent Cube, you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...