Official Website

Platform: PSP

Genre: Puzzle

Number of Players: 1 - 2
 

What one game caused chaos in my home and battling over who got dominance of the PSP when I brought it home on launch day? Lumines of course, and the biggest mistake was telling my wife that she needed to play it. The next thing I knew I was stuck playing the PS2, my new toy firmly in her hands, and it was even worse when I would try and take it somewhere only to find that she had taken it to work with her. So, when Lumines II showed up for review, do you think I got a chance to be the first to play it? Of course not, though I suppose the trade off of having to play the PlayStation 3 all worked out in the end.

Lumines, in case you didn’t know, is one of the hottest puzzle games on the PSP and has found many gamers lost in its grip, hours passing before they even knew what hit them. Lumines II I’ve been very excited for, but is it just the same game with pretty new images? In some ways it is, but not necessarily.

The concept behind Lumines is quite a simply one, and one that is also highly addictive. You simply have a two-by-two square made up for colors, one or two, and you need to align these colors match in a two-by-two square and eliminate them. You can add more cubes into the equation as well to remove more from the playing field, or use handy little special squares that will take out all of the same color as long as they are touching. It might sound like an easy job, but you also have a time line that moves from left to right across the screen and until it passes by the highlighted blocks, they will remain on the screen. Oh, and if you add some trance like backgrounds, a bit of techno music, and now, even music videos, it can be a distracting game that will keep you playing for hours on end.

If you have the original Lumines, you may recall that you were allowed to create more than one log-in, but that’s not the case here at all. While Lumines II will read the information concerning who the PSP has as far as a log-in. Many of the same avatars are still present as well as some new ones, but there is only the option for a single player. The good thing for me however is that I don’t have to deal with taunts like “you no longer have the high score” or “oh, I see that you only have your name on the top scores twice.”

For those that have amassed big high scores and find that the challenge is gone from the game, there are new three classes found in the challenge mode, A, B and S, and A begins at the beginner level while S is for the pro’s. Not only are the look and music different in each of these levels, but the heights are lowered, particularly with the S mode and makes the game even more challenging.

There are plenty of other changes in the game as well, though not with the game play. With the first Lumines, you knew which skins were coming next, and depending on how often you’d played, it could get tedious, however now the Skin Edit Mode allows you to go through the game and change the order they will appear in. this is nice because means that the skins that are a hassle do to color and backgrounds can be put in the first levels where the gameplay is a little easier. The game also allows you to customize the overall appearance, thus the colors can be tuned to your liking. You can also play challenge mode against the computer now or undertake time attack mode to see how many squares you can eliminate in the allotted time period. The puzzle mode is back as well where you must clear certain shapes and the all-new mission mode. This is similar, though here you must simply clear the screen in only so many moves.

If you get tired of hearing the same music over and over again, you can actually write your own. Lumines II features a sequencer mode, a bit like what you may have seen in the Music Generator, where you can go in and make your own song. Not only will you be able to navigate through the different parts and copy and paste notes, you can also adjust the tempo. While this mode isn’t incredibly detailed, it can be fun for those looking for a new tune to listen to while playing the game.

You still have the option to play Lumines II against a friend if you’d like and win new skins. You may also exchange data with other players and even do a little bit of game sharing for those players that still haven’t experienced the Lumines games (but the real question is, are there really any?) Also, you can get a look at another new puzzle game, Every Extend Extra.

The graphics are a little better than with the original game, though I did find that the usage of video occasionally makes the game pause while it transitions between stages. It’s a little easier to read the data on the side of the screen that tells you your score, time, and so forth and you’ll even see at the top of the play screen how your score is as far as the squares that have been removed. There are many new color combinations seen in the game, some of which can be a little be tedious to play through, but that’s part of what always made Lumines fun to play.

In many ways yes, Lumines II is the same game, but let’s really be honest here; if there were drastic changes to the game, a lot of fans really wouldn’t be very happy. Lumines is addictive and well-loved because of the simple nature of the gameplay, and that’s retained completely with the second game. There are a few new challenges though to make the game worthy of being a part of any PSP library, and the addiction is going to continue on for quite some time.
 

-mike-