Lumines

[Euan]

LKR's right... this game well and truly rawks!

It’s common knowledge that up and down the UK, the US-wherever you go that lying under the graphically superior games in the ‘PSP section’ is Lumines, the most unappreciated game the system has to offer and the , dare I say, best game on the system itself.

It’s a bold statement for a first paragraph, but out of the two, the 'best game' statement contains the most truth. Lumines hasn’t done badly in terms of sales, Q Entertainment, the developers of this and another favourite of mine, Meteos on the DS, announced that sales worldwide have topped £500,000, not bad going for a game where the main attraction is falling blocks.

Your basic aim in the game is to create 4x4 blocks of the same colour (there are two different colours on the screen at once), which are then erased by a line which moves across the screen horizontally. It’s game over when the blocks fill the screen vertically, and your blocks can no longer fall down in the direction you are pointing them in. The line, though, is very important; if the line is slow and takes a while to come across, it creates chances for massive combos, but at the same time may make your amount of blocks rise as you put more and more blocks down with rare deletions. A quick line means less combo, and more quick-thinking; try and make as remove as many blocks as you can in a short period if time - trust me, it’s not easy.

Despite the difficulty, Lumines is a game that appeals for everyone, and by that, I mean everyone. Tetris’ popularity all those years ago (damn, I was attempting to be the first to write a puzzle review without mentioning that game) brought puzzle gaming main-stream, and is one of the few genres which truly can be described as ‘one for the whole family’. How, you ask?

The game modes. All in all, there’s, something for everyone. Granny can sit and enjoy ‘puzzle mode’, a frustratingly hard experience overall, where you attempt to make shapes out of the two different colours; squares, crosses, ‘Z’ shapes etc. When giving the PSP, the Granny was reported missing from the Bingo halls for several weeks - hey, it’s going to take a long time to complete.

There’s the various time modes, where you try and create as many deleted blocks as possible in a certain amount of time - there’s a minute, five minute and ten minutes mode - and certainly the shorter distances will keep that annoyin’ brat of a little brother away from you for a few hours at least.

Mum and dad can battle hard against each other in ‘2P vs’, which I haven’t actually tried. If it works anywhere near as well as ‘vs CPU’, surprisingly a one-on-one match-up against the computer where the screen is halfed and you attempt to gain territory on the screen (as you delete more and more blocks, depending on your opponents success, your screen is made bigger and there’s made smaller, giving you more room to produce block deleting combo’s) then mum and dad would sure be reported missing for dinner cooking duties, washing up... and dad might not watch TV for a good amount of time.

Finally there’s you. Little ickle you. Your the smart one of the family who knows which mode is best; Challenge mode, why of course. This is the single mode which could entertain anyone for weeks - and I’m not joking - just trying to break your high score. This is full screen madness, with different skins behind you, levels to gain, points won (depending on deletions, including how many combos you make) and basically it is addictive as hell. Due to the ‘special blocks,’ this game can go on for a long, long time. The special blocks allow the game to continue - they delete all blocks which can directly be linked to the colour of the special block and thus create massive combos of the other colour - plus, give you room to make your moves.

The tunes though are one of the main parts of the game. The music is so - so different - so different to what you’d listen to while surfing the net, or even on TouchDS - this music is techno like, yet addictive. I cry with joy when I realise ‘shake yer body’ is coming on when I hit 30,000 in Challenge mode - some of the songs are just that good.

Many even call Lumines a music based game because of the importance of it. When doing well or badly (not that I know of that, heh) the music reacts to you - as you near the end of the game, the music may raise in tempo and go extremely fast as you attempt to create deletions out of... virtually nothing. Either way, it’s extremely neat, and music is definately something that makes this game what it is - brilliant.

The graphics aren’t bad either, but due to the nature of the game, they’re virtually irrelevent. The presentation is excellent, the blocks are usually bright, the various skins you can collect in the game are good-looking providing nice backgrounds, so maybe they’re not so irrelevent? Although they don’t really add much to the gaming experience, it’s something when you look over really makes you appreciate Lumines.

You’ll gather by now, although there’s no story which generally I require for a game, I love this game. The final section I’ll be covering is the lifespan, and that basically is up there with the most impressive section of the game (he, infact, they're all up there). This game could potentially last you until the end of the PSP’s lifespan - never mind the end of the year. It’s going to be one of these games that I come back to months after I last played it, and then have a week spell of playing it. If you have the patience and puzzle-solving skills to play Puzzle Mode, that will last you a long time (I, personally, don’t), as will vs CPU mode, Challenge Mode, Single Skin mode, the Time modes... and then if you have time to fit anything else in your schedule, you have the multiplayer mode - which I haven’t played - but judging from the rest of the game, it’s going to be a worthy experience.

My simple conclusion to this game is get it. Many over-look it because of the fact it’s a puzzle game. Don’t. Once upon a time, I ignored the ‘Meteos’ topic on our very own TouchDS because it was a puzzle game, I bought into the hype which may have been a stupid decision, but the fact is, it wasn’t a stupid decision. Meteos and Lumines are works of art, fantastic, and they deserve to be in your collection and on your PSP.

Buy it now.

Gameplay 9.5/10 - Hard for some younger users of the PSP and even me, but it’s addictive even so.

Graphics 8/10 - It doesn’t require anything special and they aren’t, but it’s well presented with some neat skins too.

Music 10/10 - Superb, the way it interacts with the player is amazing, and they’re addictive to boot.

Lifespan 9.5/10 - Limitless. One day you may leave it though, if you reach the (would take you a while) mammoth high score of 999,999, where the creators capped the score. Even so, it would still be a fun game to pick up for multiplayer.

Overall 9.5/10: A superb game. It even says something when even load times are pretty good considering it's on the PSP...

***

Tell me what you think?

[bignds]

Nice review for the most part.
Some advice, get your structure right, i can stress how essential that it is.

[Euan]

Originally Posted by bignds

Nice review for the most part.
Some advice, get your structure right, i can stress how essential that it is.

I get what your saying, but as you know, when you write something yourself it's hard to spot errors.

Where abouts is the structure poor? Can you use quotes or whatever?

Any other feedback is essential to making me a better reviewer, thankyou!

[Lkr]

not a 10?!?!?!

[Euan]

No, not a ten. It's not quite perfect, dude, nearly there though.