It’s time for another one of my amazing reviews of the newest release from Nutaku! This time it’s not just about amazing Japanese warrior girls with huge racks… Of weapons! It’s Crush Crush Online a great new game about an actual dating simulator RPG, so for all you men out there you can finally get rid of your girlfriends (if you have one) and find yourself a perfect little virtual honey, the only downside to this is that she probably won’t be able to cook you any food, well not real food anyway, ah well, I’ve always been a fan of takeaways anyway…

As some of you probably know if you’ve read my other reviews (why won’t you read them?! Don’t you love me?!) then you’ll probably know that Nutaku is an online portal where you can find some of the best Japanese anime based RPG games that exist on the world wide web, and what’s more, they’re all completely 100% free! You really can’t do much better than that really can you!

So let’s get into the story line, one sunny day you’re riding down a sunlit road to go buy yourself some Pokey and Fountain Dew (nice play on words) but a passing bird passes you and attacks you! (damn birds!) Unfortunately for you, you crashed into an attractive young girl with some very unique moon earrings, even worse you’ve also sent her to hospital… This is starting to sound like one of my better dates… Fortunately you’re now also greeted by what I can assume is a fairy by the name of Q-Piddy (again, nice play on words) who will be acting as your lovely guardian angel and she’s gonna get you laid… I mean, err love, yes love.

Q-Piddy goes onto explain that the girl you just hit and almost paralyzed was named Cassie, and she’s going to help you get a date with lovely Cassie and get into her pan… heart. You get to learn how to interact with her, and fortunately for you, you get to try and impress her by paying her hospital fees (whee!) but first you’ll need a job, so the game goes through how to get a job, to get money, to get a girlfriend… This is sounding like a lot of responsibility, I hope you’re ready for this.

Before you start making some serious cash though you’ll need some skills, so first of all you might just have to flip some burgers before you can get a real education, because clearly you paid absolutely no attention at school so you’re IQ at the moment is that of a mediocre potato, and not even a jacket potato, I’m talking about new potatoes.

Once you start flipping burgers, the bar will continue to fill up and you’ll earn money (yay!) even if you leave the game, you’ll continue to earn money for flipping all those burgers, further more if you keep at it, you may even rise up through those ranks and earn a little bit more. After a couple of flips, you’ll finally have enough to get your new lady to be out of hospital so go pay off her bills and see what happens.

Naturally, the game is a dating simulator but it wouldn’t be a very good game if it wasn’t at least a little bit difficult, so in order to progress your relationships with the girls you will need to meet certain requirements. This could be having more money, having better skills, or just building a relationship with that girl. You can increase your relationships further by talking to your girls and taking them on dates, buying them gifts and looking after them well, so treat them nice and they’ll treat you nice.

Once you’ve unlocked your first milestone and relationship with Cassie then you’ll begin unlocking hobbies like dancing, going to University or even skydiving! By doing this you’ll increase your statistics and gain access to bigger and better jobs so you can go make some more money and ultimately become the best man and boyfriend you could possibly be!

The game works through ‘Time Blocks’ so everything you do increases your ‘Time Blocks’ and you can only really fit in so many things throughout the day until your time blocks disappear, it’s kind of like reality in the fact that you can only fit in a certain amount in the day. As I said, this is a simulator, and to be honest it’s pretty realistic so be prepared to work hard to fit in all those things.

The great thing about Nutaku games is that they’re pretty easy to get the hang of, the menu is fairly straight forward and from the main section you can click on the ‘girls’ icon to see a list of all the girls you’ve met and can interact with them. You can also click on the ‘jobs’ icon to see a list of all the jobs and start making some serious money!

Game designer Sad Panda does great job on making their menus and icons as basic and as simple as possible so you don’t have to spend hours trying to understand where you are supposed to go and what you need to do. In all honesty, I would say that Crush Crush is one of the better games I have seen for this, everything is laid out perfectly and it’s really easy and efficient to understand where you need to go.

Graphics wise, the game is sound. I’ve come to expect this from Nutaku’s choice of games, and it’s really nice to see that Nutaku teamed up with a very competent designer like Sad Panda, they’ve met their expectations and I’m very happy. As far as sound goes, there’s not really much, but what do you really expect, this is a dating simulator so there’s not going to be heavy rock music or anything! The little sound effects that you get when clicking on one of the girls, on the icons or when you reach a new level, there’s some nice little effects which really make me happy.

One of the best things about Crush Crush is that it’s an “idle” game. This pretty much means that whatever you do will keep happening whilst your gone, so you can set up jobs and hobbies and come back whenever you feel like it to see how you’ve progressed with these new activities. This means you can set up everything you want to do, go watch that DVD of Finding Nemo (don’t act like you don’t love that film!) and then come back to cash into your new and sexy rewards (no innuendo intended).

If Crush Crush doesn’t really seem like your kind of game then you can browse through Nutaku’s whole host of free games to find something that you really like. If you’re feeling something a little bit more action packed then you can try your hand at Kanpani Girls, but if you’re still unsure you can find a lovely review of that game by, you guessed it, Mr. Amazing Reviewer found here! If not then there’s some other great games like Hero Zero, Idol Wars Online or Angelic Saga Online. There’s a whole host of games so if you’ve got a spare 5 minutes then go and take a look and find something you love.

As a summary, Crush Crush is definitely one of the best Nutaku games that I have played. Maybe it’s just because I’m a hopeless romantic, but it’s more likely because it’s simple but effective and it’s more enjoyable and fun and allows you to play and think for yourself and go about things as you would normally do. All in all, I would fully recommend giving it a go, if you have some spare time on your hands then give it a try!