Trash Panic Preview

Pre-E3 2009 Preview

Fridays, typically, are trash days in the old neighborhood. The streets are lined with big gray bins and mid-morning the truck rolls by, picking up those bins and dumping the contents into the truck bay. That’s seemingly the easy part of the day for the neighborhood residents. The work comes in cramming, jamming and squeezing as much trash as possible into the confines of the bin.

That may not have been the impetus behind Trash Panic, an SCEA title slated for release on the PlayStation Network, but it bears an eerily similar mechanic.

In Trash Panic, various items, from large to small, hang from a conveyor belt. The object is to cram as many items as possible into the giant bin that the objects will – one at a time – fall into. Players can slow or stop the object, rotate it and position it from one side of the bin to the other. Drop a wooden object from high enough and it is likely to break apart. Occasionally a match will appear and players can clear more space in the bin by starting a fire that consumes all the flammable materials. However, there are many items that are not consumable. That metal slide, for instance, or the safe, or refrigerator … well, you get the idea. Drop a guitar, though, just right, and you have kindling.

Tokens will also drop from the belt and these tokes are essentially benchmarks that judge the performance of the players. If you are doing well, the level might become a little harder.

If an object falls out of the bin (bounces off another object, or hits the lip of the bin and falls outside of it), the level comes to an end. But even when the level ends the player’s performance is scored in categories like neatness and carbon footprint.

Trash Panic mimics a three-dimensional look but is rather vibrant in its color scheme. The animations are also first rate.

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