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Lumines 
Release date: 23 Mar 2005
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Mygamer review
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Move over Tetris...
Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s use of slick visuals and extremely addictive gameplay make Lumines a must-have launch title for Sony’s PSP. And while the concept of Lumines is simple enough, there is also a wealth of depth behind its seemingly elementary gameplay that will keep you hooked for hours.
Squares comprised of four smaller squares fall from the top of the screen and appear in two colors. The object of the game is to take these squares and rotate them so they are aligned to form rectangles of the same color. As you create these rectangles, a time bar sweeps across the screen to delete all of the rectangles you’ve already created, freeing up valuable space to prolong the game. Unlike Tetris, in Lumines you actually can completely clear the screen, and you’re awarded a whopping 10,000 point bonus for doing so. You’re also given a bonus 1000 points each time the board contains only blocks of one color. Besides being able to rack up combos by creating multiple colored rectangles using the blocks, you can create huge screen-clearing combos by using special squares that contain a jewel at their center. Every once in a while one of these ‘jeweled’ pieces falls and, if you use the jewel in creating a colored rectangle, every square of the same color that is connected to it will be deleted, which is extremely satisfying.
Adding to the fun in Lumines is that it takes full advantage of the PSP’s wide screen, which goes a long way in providing a richer gameplay experience. It just makes the game board feel massive when compared to that of other puzzle titles. Lumines also features a selection of different play options. The game’s main mode is Challenge mode, which takes you through every skin the game has to offer until you can’t make any more combos, and the stack of blocks builds to the top of the screen. This is a great mechanic as each new level you reach becomes unlocked in the Single-Skin mode, so you can practice on whichever skin beat you in Challenge mode. Another option is Puzzle mode, where you try to create certain patterns of squares using the blocks. Puzzle mode hardly offers the same level of fun as Challenge mode, but it can still proffer a welcome breather from the occasionally lengthy play sessions you get sucked into during Challenge mode. Besides Single-Skin, Challenge, and Puzzle modes Lumines also includes a Vs. mode where you can test your skills against the computer or a friend via the PSP’s ad-hoc wireless play. This basically plays out in a similar fashion to the regular game, but with an added twist. As your opponent creates and executes combos, your own combo creation area becomes steadily smaller, turning Vs. mode into a virtual tug of war.
While several handheld systems have launched with solid puzzle games, never before has a system launched with one exuding so much style—Lumines is absolutely packed with eye candy in every department. Each unlocked skin has a distinctly different theme from the one that came before it, and you’ll experience both ends of the design spectrum. Everything from wildly eclectic mixes of vibrant colors to more toned-down and washed out colors, which add their own additional level of challenge as you force your eyes to adjust from easily distinguishable blocks to those only slightly different in color. All of the skins feature dynamic effects in the stats bar and background so that every combo you pull off produces some little tick of activity like flashing lights or blistering particle effects—which are absolutely dazzling. Even though Lumines isn’t exactly 3D, or a graphical powerhouse to showcase the PSP’s true capabilities, it’s just so damn pretty that you won’t even care that you’re using all that power to push an addictive 2D puzzler. It isn’t the graphics alone that make Lumines so satisfying to the senses, though, it’s the audio coupled with the visuals, and the perfect harmony of light and sound that makes it so hard to put down.
The audio in Lumines ably sets the pace of every skin you play. From the funky, upbeat dance grooves found in the ‘Shake Your Body’ skin, to the slower, more mellow pacing of skins like ‘Big El Paso’, all of the tracks affect gameplay by either determining the rate at which your blocks fall, or by altering the rate at which the time bar sweeps by to clear combos from the screen. Lumines almost empowers you with being the DJ for the game’s score since every action creates a sound, and all of the sounds blend seamlessly with the music as to never feel out of place or off kilter. Everything from moving and rotating your pieces, through to adding them for massive combos, mixes a wide range of sounds from high snares to short vocal clips and makes Lumines as satisfying for the ears as it is for the eyes. This can likely be attributed to the excellent Japanese musical artists, Eri Nobuchika and Mondo Grosso, who were brought on to assist in the composition of this incredible soundtrack.
While the PSP launched with plenty of good-looking 3D games, Lumines offers the kind of gripping experience that will keep you coming back again and again. Whether you’re stuck in a waiting room at the doctor’s office or looking for a way to pass the time in that boring econ class you’re stuck in, Lumines provides some of the most fulfilling gameplay sessions ever engineered on a handheld. Even if puzzle games aren’t your thing, Lumines has just the right amount of charm to make you a believer. If you’ve got a PSP and don’t already have this game, do yourself a favor and run—not walk—but run to your nearest game shop and pick this one up.
Review by Joshua Irish on 16 May 2005
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