Lumines: Puzzle Fusion

Lumines is, in short, one of the few games all PSP owners should take the time to experience, and probably one of the most acclaimed launch titles on the PSP. It has gone on to spawn ports on many systems and at least one sequel so far, but what's the big deal?

 Lumines can, and probably will, be related to modern tetris games if someone were to try to describe it on the spot: You're given pieces that will automatically fall from the top of the screen (after a couple of seconds of planning, which diminishes as the speed level increases) and your goal is to match groups of the same color which will then get cleared by the "timeline" a bar that passes across the playing field at regular intervals that relate to the current song (this is in part a rhythm game). It is a simple concept and it works. It works incredibly well.

The bulk of your time will be spent (if you're playing alone) on the Challenge Mode, testing your skills or unlocking new skins (new songs to play on in Single Skin Mode). As your score increases in Challenege Mode, the speed level goes up, akin to many puzzle games, and the skin will change. Each time you reach a new skin, you will have that one automatically added to your archive. Lumines' basic concept is one you can immediately learn and obsess over, but takes many hours to perfect and master, but once you do, it is one of the most gratifying gaming experiences out there. The other single player modes include a Puzzle Mode, where your objective is to clear every colored block from the stage within a certain time limit and after a little bit of fiddling, you should be able to breeze through this.

Finally, there's the two player battle mode, which you can play against the computer in a sort of Battle Challenege Mode, where you unlock new avatars for each computer you beat, as well as their skin that you play them on. This mode will undoubtably last you a good while as well because no matter how skilled you are at the challenge mode, the battle mode is an entirely different experience. It plays like a tug of war, where the playing field is divided equally in half. Your goal is to be the last one standing and you accomplish this by making more matches than your opponent each time the timeline passes. If you "win" the match, your avatar launches an "attack" and you take control of an extra column of the playing field (or grid, if you really want to be picky). The furthest you can push the field is such that your opponent only has four columns to work with of area, which amounts to two pieces side-by-side and is more often than not a deathblow. Now, to put it into perspective, this is all happening every second or so, because the rounds are decided by each timeline pass, which depends on the skin, but that can vary between multiple passes each second, or a single pass every few seconds. This all culminates to a fast paced, intense showdown of your block matching skill (which sounds completely lame, but it is a whole lot of fun).

Now, given this is a puzzle game, visuals are a significant second to gameplay, but I've got to talk about 'em anyways. The whole game revolves around skins, and skins set the theme for everything. Essentially, a skin is your choice (or, in the case of challenge mode, not your choice) background and accompanying music (which subsequently decides the timeline speed). Backgrounds range from unobtrusive, almost "zen-like" designs that will have equally flowing songs and movements to accompany them, to fast-paced, busy storms of colors all over the screen. Likewise, the pieces will match the theme of the skin, but generally speaking there are only a couple of piece styles, save a few skins that have "custom" ones. You'll either have bricks that are in contrasting colors and have an almost metallic, or gem-like quality to them; bricks that appear to look almost like legos, with the typical color arrangement being that of a yin-yang deal (the dot in the middle of each square is the color of the opposing color and vice versa); or rounded, figure-eight kind of pieces. The impact this has on gameplay is nonexistant, but if you're a repetition-cop, the pieces may visually appear "same-y" after just a few skins.

The soundtrack is great, and there's a good variety of songs to unlock, though you will probably be hearing a lot of techno in this first PSP release (which is admittedly understandable once you play the game). As well as the songs themselves, simply moving and rotating pieces, dashing them across the screen, making a match, or making a large combo all have their own sound clips that are from the song. For example, rotating a piece on the "Shake Your Body" skin (by Mondo Grosso) will be accompanied by a "Shake!" clip each time you rotate it. All of these little clips and chirps usually mesh with the song perfectly (even if your frantic moves aren't even remotely on-beat) and it all culminates to an enjoyable experience each time the skin changes, or you're just trying to set that new high score on every skin you've unlocked.

Lumines is one of those games you can keep coming back to, and if you've got a friend with it, there are the battle options that you will become acquainted with during the many hours you'll sink into this game unlocking things and setting high scores. It is a quintessential portable title that any PSP owner would do well to have on them for long or short trips alike.

It would be difficult to create a list of the most influential games of all time and not put Tetris on there. Invented by Alexey Pajitnov 1985, it’s pretty much single handedly responsible for the success of the Game Boy, and is not doubt the first hit of gaming goodness for many virgin players. I would be surprised to hear I was the only one that played so much that falling blocks started to invade my dreams, making lines in my sleep. Tetris was a phenomenon, and rightly so.

Of course the other thing it did was show how well suited handheld consoles were for puzzle games. With their simple play mechanics, short game times, and generally low system requirements, they’re exactly the kind of thing you want on the train, rather than something you can’t play in short bursts. So it’s no surprise that the PSP, even with all its graphical capabilities, is home to one already.

Lumines is from designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who also designed Rez, and the Nintendo DS game Meteos (which I hope to review at a later date). Like Tetris or Columns, it’s also a game involving blocks, but unlike those games it also involves colour and time. The basic gameplay involves 2x2 squares falling from the top of the screen, where each little square making up the larger square is one of two possible colours. If part of one of these squares hits an existing block on the way down, then it’ll split off and continue to fall. You make the blocks disappear by moving and rotating them until you can match four similarly coloured blocks into a square, which are then removed when they are hit by the line which slowly sweeps across the screen. Like Tetris, the game is over when the blocks pile up and hit the top of the screen.

It’s actually harder to describe than it is to play, and like all good puzzle games it has a three-minute learning curve, followed by a three month mastering curve. You’ll quickly realise that the fastest way to high score heaven is the line that sweeps across the screen, and making sure you have as many overlapping squares as possible ready to disappear when that comes along. But you’ll also realise that not everybody has a brain suited for this kind of puzzle, and that visualising how blocks are going to interact when spun or split is not a talent we all have. Incredible concentration is required to really get the most out of it.

While obviously not stretching the power of the PSP too much, the visual style of Lumines makes it stand out when placed to most other puzzle games due to its use of skins. A skin in Lumines changes both the appearance of the board (the background, the colour of the squares) and the music and sound effects. As you progress through the Challenge mode you unlock new skins as the difficulty increases. There’s often a moment of disorientation as this change takes place, because you’ve been concentrating so hard on matching orange and white blocks and now you have to match purple and yellow, but it brings with it a freshness that stops you from getting bored at looking at the same thing all the time.

There are four modes included, Challenge, Time Attack, Puzzle and Versus. Challenge mode is the main single player game, where as outlined above the difficulty and skin changes as you progress. Time Attack lets you choose a length of time within which you have to get as high a score as possible, and is probably the most addictive part of the package. It’s sometimes difficult to stop yourself having one more try at beating your best. In Puzzle mode you have to try and build a picture (like a dog, or a cross) out of the falling blocks, making sure the colours are in the right places, and I found it to be ridiculously hard. Finally the Versus mode (playable against the CPU or another PSP owner via the wifi), works like most puzzle game battle modes where the success of one player fills up the other players screen. It would have been nice to have this part playable over the Internet instead of needing a PSP owning friend.

It would be fair to say there’s been a drought of quality games for the PSP, so it’s quite amusing that one of the best to come along eschews any kind of complex gameplay or a 3D graphics engine and is something as basic as a puzzler. Lumines is easy to recommend to all PSP owners, whatever kind of games they normal go for. The simple truth is that it’s just fun to play, a wonderful example of a strong central idea presented with just enough flair to keep it interesting, and probably the title you'll return to long after you've mastered all the tracks in Burnout or won every tournament in Virtua Tennis.

Lumines is a game which features blocks that fall and then ultimately must be "busted". Yeah, I know what you're thinking, not another Tetris clone? In terms of design, Lumines does owe a lot to Tetris, but compared to most puzzlers and pretty much everything else on the PSP, it is refreshingly different due to it's interesting rhythm element.

Design wise, Lumines is a very simple game to get to grips with. Square blocks fall which are composed of four smaller squares. Each smaller square will be one of two possible colours and joining these similarly coloured smaller squares into one large square will result in said block being busted. Anybody who has played Tetris will feel instantly at home. Unlike Tetris, Lumines spices things up a little with a interesting musical element. I know what you're thinking - how on earth can music be intergrated into Tetris? It's actually pretty simple. As the music plays in the background, a large line will sweep across the screen in time to the music. If you can stack more of the same coloured larger cubes together as the line sweeps across, you can potentially have enormous combos of block busting goodness. It's a rather interesting addition, and one which actually works rather well.

Lumines is one of the few games which makes use of the PSP's enourmous display. The colourful backgrounds are insanely bright, crisp and great to look at. Lumines should have shipped with a pair of sunglasses to stop eye strain! Playing through the various modes unlocks new skins and music to play along to - everything from the bright sunshine of the appropriately named "Shinin" to the calm and relaxing sounds of "Japanese Form". Every skin changes the colour of the blocks, so you're not just looking at the same colour schemes over and over again.

The main bulk of the game is contained in the games main challenge mode, but there a few distractions in the shape of a timed puzzle mode, and multiplayer for multiple PSP's. You can also play any skin you unlocked individualy in single skin mode. OK, so Lumines doesn't have much else other than it's main mode but that mode is so strong it's enough to warrant a purchase (and by now, probably a very cheap one). Lumines is definitley worth your time and money, guaranteed.