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Lumines Plus
- March 12, 2007 15:23 PM PST
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Many would argue that the puzzle game genre reached its pinnacle back in 1985, when a Russian computer programmer named Alexey Pajitnov created a clever little game that featured perpetually falling multi-colored blocks.
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You may have heard of it--it's called Tetris. Since then, we've had countless imitators and a handful of innovators, but each and every puzzle game that requires you to eliminate elements from a playfield owes its existence, in some way, to the Russian grand-daddy. Lumines is especially indebted, as its "blocks falling in a grid" style of gameplay is pretty much Tetris, but with the added twist of techno music.
Feel the Beat
Usually, adding techno music to something can't be considered an improvement, but it works in Lumines, where the pulsating beat actually plays a vital role. For the uninitiated, Lumines involves blocks that fall within a limited playing field. Like the aforementioned Tetris, these blocks are made up of four individual elements which are shaded one of two colors; unlike Tetris, the colors make a difference as you need to stack, at a minimum, four individual blocks of the same color in order to create a removable section. And unlike Tetris, where the blocks disappear on their own, you have to wait for a scan-line that moves across the screen at regular intervals, which means there is a strategic element present--create a removable block at the wrong time and the scan-line may only remove half of it.
It's somewhat hard to explain in words but like any good puzzle game, it's instantly accessible. You'll grasp the basic premise in mere seconds, and you'll be stacking those colored blocks like a pre-schooler in no time. But is it any fun? Honestly, it isn't. The game lacks the Zen-like quality that made Tetris so successful, and the pounding music breaks any sense of concentration that you can establish.
The game also never really changes: you endlessly stack like-colored sections and wipe them off the board. The music changes and the color scheme shifts, but beyond that, it's the same old song over and over again. You could level the same critique at Tetris but that game had an element of addictive fun that Lumines never really managed to capture.
And in case you were wondering, the game is called Lumines Plus because it combines elements of the two PSP Lumines titles. The good thing is, the game is priced as a value title, and for puzzle fanatics, or for fans of the PSP titles, this is a great package. But honestly, playing Lumines made me long for the intricate simplicity of Tetris, and it's just a reminder that perfection, once achieved, can be hard to top
