A unique puzzle game that'll leave you scratching your head.

To jump to the PS3 Echochrome review, click here.  

Puzzle games don’t come often enough. They are far and few between, which has proven to be a good thing because they typically aren’t worth the time or money to play. We were pleased to see Echochrome late last year and earlier this year, and it certainly has tickled our fancy.

Following one simple principle, Echochrome is all about finding the right perspective, a philosophical point that has spanned millennia and countless books. Disregarding that, each level is an assortment of different platforms that the player, a semi-complex stick figure, must navigate to collect what can best be described as ghosts, visages of itself.

The trick is to find the fastest path to collect all of these using the thumbstick or D-pad to change the perspective. Changing the perspective, done by moving the camera, can do an assortment of things: connect platforms that aren’t physically connected, block the view of an obstacle to make it disappear for the character, make a hole in the ground above another platform instead of below or beside it, and do the same for jumping points.

It sounds simple enough, but as with changing ones perspective on anything, it requires a mind-altering view that will more than likely leave you scratching your head. Like most puzzles, some levels will seem blatantly obvious or obscurely difficult to some, and the opposite for others.

However, there is a slight twist that at first makes gameplay easier, but in the end tires the experience significantly. Because the system of connecting platforms, the most important action that can take place by changing the camera angle, doesn’t happen automatically unless the camera is placed perfectly, developer JAPAN Studios made a button do that instead. Pushing the square button connects platforms and shifts the camera, saving time and effort of twiddling the annoying PSP thumbstick.