I don't know, in this case, with a bit of reformatting the switch can look pretty similar:

    function processUserInput(command) {
        switch (command) {
            case "north":    movePlayer("north"); break;
            case "east":     movePlayer("east");  break;
            case "south":    movePlayer("south"); break;
            case "west":     movePlayer("west");  break;
            case "look":     describeLocation();  break;
            case "backpack": showBackpack();      break;
        }
    }

Although that's to be expected, a switch on a string value isn't that much different to a string lookup in an associative array.