Lumines: Electronic Symphony

Released way back in 2005, the original Lumines was one of the PSP’s most celebrated launch titles. It took the tried-and-true Tetris formula and not only turned it on its side, but also injected it with a shot of electronica-laced adrenaline. In this, it created something that was new and exciting, yet familiar and addicting like Alexey Pajitnov’s seminal puzzler did 21 years prior.

After its resounding success, it spawned a PSP sequel, several PS2 and PC iterations, and an XBLA version. The last proper Lumines game was dubbed Supernova and was released exclusively on the PlayStation Network in 2008. Like its XBLA brethren before it, this download-only sequel failed to achieve the same success as its portable predecessors.

With a brand new Sony handheld on store shelves, a fresh new Lumines title is ready at launch. Can this series, now back to where it arguably belongs, reclaim its former greatness? For the most part, the answer is a resounding "yes!"

For those who have never had the pleasure of experiencing Lumines' visual and audio splendor, the game at first glance looks like a Tetris clone. Instead of dropping different shaped block pieces in a vertically oriented bucket though, all of your pieces are square blocks, and the play field is horizontal.

Your blocks consist of four smaller squares and are randomly adorned with a two-color pattern, including the occasional one-color block. You clear blocks by rotating and dropping them to line up the colors and make sections of matching colors (2×2, 3×3, etc.). The sections are cleared by a line that is runs from left to right on a set rhythm.

It's a unique take on the block-falling theme (or was, back in 2005), and you'll have to slightly retrain your brain if you've spent the last 28 years mastering Tetris. At first, you'll try to align the colors into lines, but eventually you'll realize that in order to clear out what you want, you sometimes have to drop the blocks in an orientation that isn't entirely intuitive. Once it clicks, however, it's a fairly simple thing to grasp.

What really brings the game into its own is the music. The best explanation I've ever heard of Lumines is, "Tetris in a Tokyo dance club," and that's about as accurately as anyone could put it. The whole thing is set to a long list of upbeat electronica songs, but they're not just the soundtrack. The songs feature sound effects and musical hits that match up to what you're doing with the blocks. Lumines' sound integration makes for an incredibly lively and engrossing experience.

With a big, beautiful OLED screen to work with, Electronic Symphony is an excellent showpiece for the Vita. Its bright colors, eclectic color patterns, and the paired music tracks are crystal clear, and the UI never feels cramped. The visualizations that play behind the transparent block well are likewise active yet somehow never distracting.

In an attempt to support as many of the system's new features as possible, all the menu controls have been touch-screen-ified. This is fine; the game's large screen and uncluttered menu layout means you'll never fumble to select the option you want.

As in previous titles, you have an avatar at the bottom left of the screen. You can select from a long list of bizarrely shaped characters, but this time each one has a different ability that can affect the gameplay. When charged up, just touch them to use the ability. Abilities include things like making the next three blocks all single-color, temporarily stopping the block-clearing timeline, or spawning a shuffle block, which rearranges all the block colors sitting in your bucket.

After using your avatar's power, you have to wait for it to recharge. The recharge system is not ideal. You must either wait for him (her? it?) to recharge on his own, or you can repeatedly tap the rear touch screen to charge up a lot quicker.

The first option takes entirely too long during intense rounds. Tapping the rear touch panel is indeed a faster way to get more uses of your avatar's special ability, but more often than not I kept forgetting and had to force myself to keep tapping the rear touch panel. It never felt natural and usually just distracted my attention from the more important goings-on in front of my eyes.

There are several different modes to keep you busy. The most basic is Voyage: a simple, continuous session with every single track played in sequence. It's the fastest way to pick up and play, but because the setlist never changes, you'll eventually tire of hearing the same songs over and over.

Playlist is where you can create a custom experience. In this mode, you can create your own track list using all the songs you've currently unlocked. You can edit, save, and delete setlists to your heart's content and play all your favorites at once, or play a track you've unlocked but haven't had the patience or skill to see in Voyage mode yet.

Master and Stopwatch modes are both skill tests for hardened veterans. Master mode consists of five increasingly difficult challenges where you don't have your avatar, and Stopwatch is a timed session where you have to clear a certain number of blocks within a certain time limit.

Duel mode is for playing ad hoc against another player nearby. In this mode, your avatars have different abilities that affect the other player, adding a nice additional competitive element. Disappointingly, there is no online play.

There are some modes missing here that fans of the franchise will find upsetting. Gone are the Puzzle, Dig Down, and Sequencer modes from previous Lumines titles. Also, I find it baffling that there continues to be nothing in the way of a jukebox mode or a way to purchase the tracks in-game. Given Sony's promotion of device integration and all the extra features of their systems, it should be a no-brainer to add links to purchase the tracks on Amazon or at least Sony's own Qriocity service.

The most interesting new mode is called World Block. You gain experience as you play in any mode, and this not only unlocks additional avatars and skins, but also contributes to clearing out the World Block. Similar to Noby Noby Boy’s Girl, everyone playing Electronic Symphony around the world helps to clear the World Block as they play. It is restored every 24 hours, and if you contribute to the cause on a given day you gain an XP bonus.

This is a cool idea, and could have been used to make some interesting reward-based incentives, or even add to the game's copious replay value. As it stands however, it's not being used to its full potential.

First, even though everyone in the world contributes to the World Block, it's never said when the timer resets other than "every 24-hour period." Are we talking midnight to midnight? 5 p.m. to 5 p.m.? Based on what time zone?

Often when I went in to check my contribution for the day, I'd find that the World Block had already been reset. Curiously this happened during my 7:30am train ride to work and also around midnight. I'm guessing this is due to the game being freshly released, so the World Block gets taken out quickly, but some transparency on the timeline would be helpful.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any reward for clearing the World Block outside of some measly additional XP. I managed to catch a few sessions where I helped chip away at the thing and was met with nothing more than a congratulations. No item, no special feature, no prize at the bottom of this cereal box. Maybe it says something about the way gamers have been conditioned to expect reward, but it's still a bit of a cruel tease.

The best part about the new Lumines is undoubtedly the soundtrack. While the first few titles on the PSP focused primarily on the musical stylings of Takayuki Nakamura, this time Q Entertainment went with a completely new 33-track setlist of licensed music that includes LCD Soundsystem, The Chemical Brothers, Benny Benassi, and many others, each with their own level and color palette. It's a damn impressive grouping of electronica, and it really helps you get immersed in the game.

At the end of the day, Lumines: Electronic Symphony is more Lumines. It doesn't really do a whole lot to innovate or change the series. Some of the modes feel incomplete, and there are a few things curiously missing. If you're reading this review, it's essentially the same experience you've probably played several times by now, albeit polished to an OLED shine.

For most people, that will be just fine. Like all great puzzle games before it, changing or complicating Lumines' elegant gameplay would probably ruin it. This is the game you know and love. It's about the feeling you get when you've hit your stride and your retrained brain is rotating and dropping blocks like second nature. It's about the way the game makes it seem like what you're doing on-screen is affecting the music, even though it's not.

And at that moment, when you reach Lumines zen, all you hear is the music, all you see is the screen, and everything else around you fades away. You realize that you've been dancing in place for the last ten minutes and you missed your train stop, but you are unstoppable.

Small problems aside, this is quite simply the best version of Lumines to date. $40 is a lot for a puzzler, but considering the Vita's launch line-up is filled with sequels and ports, Electronic Symphony will gives you great bang for your buck. You'll be hooked all over again to its endless replayability and big track list. And if you buy it digitally from the PS Store, it's only $36, so there's that.