Waste management is a messy business.  Tony Soprano knew it.  Oscar the Grouch knew it.  That little raccoon fucker whose been getting into my cans all summer knows it too.  Now, thanks to Sony Computer Entermtainment Japan, you can just these illustrious names and venture deep within the Tetris-like bowels of the trash disposal industry.

Have you ever seen that episode of The Simpsons where they visit Rehnier Wolfcastle's yard sale?  The one where Homer shows off his exceptional packing skills that he picked up during years and years of Tetris?  Trash Panic feels a lot like that.  You'll be using your best spatial recognition skills to pack a giant dumpster full of real world items.

Items will be made of a number of different materials, and will all react accordingly.  Drop a glass bottle with force and it was shatter.  Drop a lit match next to some toilet paper or a wooden crate and watch the fire consume everything flammable.  Fire getting out of control?  Put the lid on the trash can to limit the oxygen.  Trash Panic takes physics to a different place than we're used to in video games.  So often we're focused on how things ragdoll and how cars crash that we often forget everything else.  Physics is the science of reaction, and Trash Panic embraces that science.  Every object reacts according to it's material.  Half the fun of the game is in figuring out which object will smash what, and what will burn or decompose better.

Nailing physics to this degree is something of a monumental task.  As you might expect, it only gets it right about 70% of the time.  For the most part it's barely even noticeable when something that should break something else doesn't, but every now and then you'll break a stapler with a pencil and say to yourself "that wouldn't happen."  Still, getting past little oddities like this isn't much of a chore, and once you do you'll find yourself exploiting these strange situations rather than being perplexed by them.

Your objective in Trash Panic is to somehow get all of the trash that needs to be disposed of to fit into one can.  And while items can be crushed, burned, destroyed, and broken down, it's still one hell of a challenge.  There's such a massive amount of trash to be disposed of in some levels that you'll wonder how you'll ever accomplish it.  Even on the easiest setting, completing all six levels is a monumental challenge.  After nearly a month of enjoyment, I still can't tell you what the final level has to offer.

While the average gamer might see this difficulty as a handicap in most games,  it's a welcome challenge in the puzzle world.  How many of us can ever really say we've conquered Tetris or Puzzle League?  It's this level of difficulty that offers up a great deal of replayability to the title.

Few downsides exist, but they are there.  As far as the menus go, there's definitely a Japanese-weirdness to it that makes this far from straight-forward.  Furthermore, going into your first sitting without a tutorial will leave you completely stumped.  Trash Panic is far from pick-up-and-play friendly.  You'll likely need to check out the tutorial from the main menu (it's not built in as a "you're new, let's show you what to do" feature like most games offer) to wrap your head around exactly what is needed.

The final issue, and the only one that really provided an ongoing annoyance, was the lack of a save system.  While Trash Panic saves your score data and which levels you've unlocked for free play, you'll need to tackle the campaign mode from stage 1 every time you play.  When you're in my situation (which many of you will be) of mastering stages 1 through 3 but being stopped dead in your tracks at 4 every time, having to spend 20 minutes getting through those first 3 stages every time I boot it up is a real pain.

Despite this, replaying those other levels still offers up a ton of fun.  Each stage features a completely different set of trash pieces and destruction methods (wood fire, oil fire, "decomposition ball," etc..) which at least keeps replaying them fresh and fun every time.  I think that's what's so great about what Trash Panic has to offer.  No stage ever lasts so long that the pieces begin to feel repetitive, and factoring in yet unmentioned things like giant "boss" objects to destroy and special objects that you need to protect always keeps things changing up just enough to remain interesting at all times.

The difficulty involved might be a slight turn off to some, but for any hardened puzzle veteran with a love for physics Trash Panic is a sure thing.

YAY! - physics RULE.  neat twist on spatial puzzle gaming.  frantic, challenging.
NAY! - might be too difficult for some.  confusing menus.  lack of save in main mode is kinda bullshit.
For those of you who REALLY hate reading, or only learned to read numbers: 8/10

Trash Panic is available exclusively for the PlayStation 3 via the PlayStation Store for $4.99.

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