Up until last year I only played one of Q Entertainment’s games -- Lumines. It was the first game I bought for the PSP back in 2005. It was a fun game and I got about 12 skins into it, but I shelved it after a few weeks of play. Years later I would buy another game developed by Q Entertainment -- Every Extend Extra -- as an impulse buy (used game $2.99). Something about that game really clicked with me; kind of like when you would get an album from a band and you thought it was alright, but would completely love it after not listening to it for a while and then would love the bands whole music catalog. Now I have a tremendous appreciation for Q Entertainment and their type of games. And to show my appreciation, here’s a write up of a few of their games I’ve played and now own.

Most of Q Entertainment’s games are a fantastic combination of puzzles and music. And their signature is the backgrounds, or what they call skins, which appear behind the puzzles in which you are tying to solve. Skins can be a static image or they can have some sort of movement when you perform a combo or when the level changes. There are many puzzles that need solving, which means these games have a high replay value and make it worth the price, especially now since most of their games are very inexpensive to purchase when you buy them used. Let’s begin by discussing the first game they have released, Lumines.

Name: Lumines

Release US: 3/22/2005

Platform: PSP

This is Q’s breakout hit and was well received by many critics. Lumines starts by dropping a square with a face that has four smaller squares where they each have one of two colors. At the same time, a vertical line called the “timeline” is moving across the play field. The goal is to line up at least four colors together in a square like pattern. When you line up (or square up) the colors, the timeline will remove those squared colors from off the play field, freeing up space for more blocks. The game ends when you have filled the blocks to the top of the play field. The gameplay is simple, yet addicting. This is the kind of game I like for a handheld gaming console. But the puzzle gameplay is only half of what the game offers.

Stimulating the senses, the game does a great job on the audio and visual front. Each level consists of a music track. Most tracks are of the electronic genre. There is no clock on the screen, so the only way of knowing when you’re progressing in a level is when you hear the music advance to the next looping chunk of the track. It’s very gratifying to hear that part of the song change. It’s like you’re in some sort of trance when trying to match colors, only to be snapped out of it when the sound of the music changes. In addition to audio, each level has its own unique background image. In Lumines these backgrounds are called skins. Most are a static image and some have a bit of animated art in them when something happens during the gameplay. Some skins have abstract images while others have things like space stations or satellite images. The skins keep things fresh so you’re not always looking at one background throughout the entire game.

The neat thing about Lumines is that it feels like one continuous game. When you beat a level, the skin and music track changes, but your puzzle pieces remain on the screen. No status screen appears and no interruption in the gameplay occurs. Just keep going with a new track and background.

Name: Every Extend Extra

Release US: 11/7/2006

Platform: PSP

Continuing with their handheld puzzle games is Every Extend Extra. EEE is not an original idea. The game is based on a 2003 freeware game on the PC called Every Extend. Every Extend has only one level, but the goal was to get the better high score. Q built upon the concept by including extra features of gameplay, game modes, and added levels to the game (hence the word “Extra” in the title). And in addition, inserted their own unique style of music and skins to the game; giving it that Q flavor.

You move a ship around and detonate it near enemy ships. When your ship detonates it creates an energy blast. Any enemies caught in the blast are destroyed. Some enemy ships are green and they leave behind a green bonus item. Pick up enough green bonus items and you gain an extra ship to detonate. Other ships are pink and leave behind a quicken. These items increase the speed and frequency of enemies as well as the music for the stage. This creates a more frantic gameplay experience to the game. It’s an advantage to you if you have more quickens because the number of enemies on the screen lead to bigger combos and the ability to collect more items without having to sacrifice more ships. This is a great risk/reward tradeoff.

Their is also a clock counting down to zero. The boss usually appears when the clock has one minute left. The goal is to collect as much ships and quickens before that occurs. Mini bosses in the stage help this because they leave yellow bonus items that adds time to your clock. The game is over when you either run out of ships or the clock gets to zero.

The backgrounds are always in motion and create a great visual show while all of the chaos is occurring in the foreground with the gameplay. The music in the game is fantastic and is the best soundtrack when compared to the other games mentioned in this blog entry. My favorite track is from the Nostalgic Drive level, Summer Party from artist qp. The increased tempo by collecting more quickens really adds to the track, especially when the vocals come in. The frantic gameplay, music, and backgrounds can lead to a sensory overload; which may leave you exhausted when you finish the game or when you lose. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it shows that Q was successful in creating a great shoot ‘em up, which are suppose to be frantic by design.

The game also has a great presentation. Every level starts with a quick intro, displaying the level’s name, the track name and the music artist, and a taste of what the visual theme for the level will be. I like how the deeper you get into the menu system, the music keeps adding layers to itself. The original game Every Extend is included too, which allows you to compare the original to the Q version. A unique multiplayer mode is there as well. Every Extend Extra is my favorite game from Q Entertainment that I’ve played so far.

Name: Gunpey

Release US: 11/17/2006

Platform: PSP

Gunpey was released as two different games. One for the PSP and the other for the DS. Both games are different from one another in terms of gameplay and style. I have not played the DS version so this will be about the PSP version.

I don’t think there is a game that I’ve played that could not be more simpler, but have it be so difficult to progress in. All you have to do is connect lines horizontally from left to right across a grid of five. All the game pieces will move upward one space every few seconds. The game is over when a game piece crosses above the top line. Whatever line you create will be cleared from the screen, but you have just 2 or 3 seconds to try to add a few more pieces to it to add to your score. The amount of different pieces are a minimal four. Two angle pieces (^ and V) and two diagonal pieces ( / and \ ). The lines can get very large, consisting of crazy zig-zag patterns that go diagonally across the play grid. Things can get out of hand very fast if you don’t manage things well.

Like Every Extend Extra, this is not an original game created by Q. This is based on a game from the WonderSwan handheld gaming console. And just like in EEE, Q gives the game unique skins and music to the game. There’s apparently a total of 40 skins to get. My pathetic self can barely get to the third skin! I’ve been watching videos of people playing the game so that I can better myself and hopefully progress further. It looks like you have to play the game very fast to score huge combos to move quickly across from one skin to the next. I tried that for a bit, but I was just randomly moving pieces very quickly around the screen. Sometimes huge combos would occur and the skin change would be much sooner than my normal and very slow way of playing. This was alright, but it wasn’t fun because I wasn’t really playing the game. Ugh, I guess my brain does not work well with a puzzle game like this one. Give me the visual crazy madness of EEE any day!

The presentation in this game is great was well. The menu system does the same thing as EEE where layers are added to the music when you go deeper into the menus. The in game music is great too. Similar to Lumines, when the skins change the game pieces remain where they are. There is no break in gameplay and you just continue with what you have. Even though this game is difficult for me to move forward in I still enjoy the experience the game delivers in both gameplay and presentation.

These are three solid games that have a great replay value and make owning a PSP worth it. A solid experience for each game that fuses music, visuals, and puzzle gameplay into nice compact packages made for a handheld console. Now with that said, it still would be neat to play the Q experience on a TV gaming console. Watching those visual displayed on a big HDTV would look spectacular. Well, it looks like they already thought of me because something like this exists. Enter Qubed, a game that includes three games in one.

This is great because this game includes: Lumines Live!, Every Extend Extra Extreme, and Rez HD! Three games that were released as individual downloads for the 360 but now are now all included on one disc. In addition, most of the DLC that came with these games are included too. And all for a nice price to boot since it was released back in 2009. Qubed will be the next game I’ll soon be playing.

There are a few more games I’m planning to get. Once I get these, this should complete my collection of games I want from Q Entertainment.

• Lumines II. I heard this is not as good as the first. That it’s pretty much the same as the first game in terms as gameplay, but with some distracting music videos playing in the background. In the end I don’t care because it’s more Lumines! As for the gameplay, I’ll go with the old saying, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”
• Lumines Electronic Symphony. This is the official sequel to the first game and evolves the gameplay a bit. It even includes a story of some sort. I really want to play this one, but I need to get a Vita first!
• Child of Eden. I actually already have this one. I’m even planning to play this game with the PlayStation move too, which should actually put that peripheral to some use. I’ll be playing this one after I have finished playing Rez HD.
• Meteos. I’m still on the fence for this one. I kind of want it, but compared to the others it is the lowest on the priority list.