Platform: PSP

Genre: Puzzle

Number of Players: 1
 

How many times have I seen my wife sitting at the computer, her eyes glazed over in a trance like state as hour after hour go by while playing Luxor? Far too many actually, but Luxor isn’t going to simply be relegated to personal computers any longer. The freeware game (the demo version is free at least) is making a jump onto the PSP, not that the system doesn’t already have more than it’s fair share of puzzle titles, but one more really never hurts.

Luxor actually is a very simple concept, and one that becomes addictive incredibly quickly With Egyptology playing as the main theme of the game, each stage simple as a twisting pathway filled with multiple colored balls. At the bottom of the screen you have a small paddle that you can move left to right, and this wonderful devise has balls that can be aimed and shot at the line in the upper play portion of the field. The idea here is simple; three or more balls together in order will be eliminated, and depending on the position of the line, they may slide back. If you have three or more of another color, these will also be eliminated from play.

Although Luxor has an idea that is quite simple and is similar to the early days of video games, there are a few more things that make the game a little more complicated that just shooting balls. The chain will slowly work its way down the screen and should it reach the end, you’ll loose a life. The paths also are not always just a single, unobstructed line. At times the path may overlap itself making it impossible to shoot at times or you may find other elements that interfere with getting a clean shot. In order to pass each stage, you must build up the bar at the bottom of the screen by simply earning points.

You will score points for eliminated ball collections as well as combos, but there are other things to keep an eye out of. You may find falling coins, and should you collect 30 of these, you will gain another life. There are instant power-ups that, such as a scorpion that will quickly make its way up the path and destroy the first ten balls that it touches. There are ones that will temporarily stop the flow of the balls, another to speed up your shots, even ones that will reverse the motion and the blessed color balls that will match identically to whatever they hit. Even better however are the fireballs which will destroy everything in their radius, lightning blots that can be used to eliminate lines of balls. In order to obtain these power ups, you’ll need to get the combos in a row, something that is fairly easy to do. You may even find that your combos release precious gems that can be collected for additional points.

There are two different versions of Luxor to play. There is an Endless Tomb Mode, and this should be pretty obvious as to what it’s all about. There’s no end, it’s that simple, and it’s also the type of thing where you can find that time itself has fleeted by you without even realizing it. Practice mode consists of four different degrees of difficulty, but you’ll need to start at the beginning and work your way up, and as you begin working your way through these, you will unlock new stages that can be played in this mode. The survival mode on the other hand simply allow you to select one stage and see just how long you can survive before the balls reach the bottom of the screen.

Having played this on the computer a few times (maybe more than a few) the graphics look nearly identical, and they even look just a little better (though that can always be an issue with your video card.) There isn’t much that’s really flashy about Luxor, but then again, it really doesn’t need to be. The playing fields are nicely designed and not too distracting from the task at hand. This again does remind me of video games from the late 70’s and early 80’s, though visually better, where it was all about game play, and that’s the key ingredient that makes Luxor successful.

If there’s any real problem with the game, it’s just the fact that once again, I’m going to lose the PSP. The more puzzle games that come out on the system, the less that I find it in my hands. Luxor though is addicting, incredibly addicting, and it’s far too much fun for its own good. If you’ve already found yourself up until the wee hours of the morning playing it on your PC, there’s not a reason to avoid buying it on the PSP and for those that haven’t yet played it, consider yourself warned; this is a addiction that there is no cure for.
 

-mike-