Lumines: I Can't Stop the Blocks from Falling

by Wootini

The mark of a good puzzle game is that you still see the patterns flashing in your mind's eye even after you've stopped playing. I did it with Tetris, and it's even worse with the PSP launch title Lumines. (Pronounced Loo-me-NESS, not Loo-MINES, as I'd initially thought!) The falling blocks won't leave me alone! And even when it's just in my imagination, they still don't fit together right!

As with all classic puzzlers, it's simple to pick up, and hard as hell to put down. Instead of making rows like in Tetris or Dr. Mario, you have to adjust to making squares of four like colors. It's hard to get used to at first, but eventually it becomes second nature and you find yourself creating combinations you never would've expected. The other twist is that as you create the squares (and neighboring squares of the same color to create combos), they aren't actually eliminated from the playing field until the Time Line wipes across it. This line moves in time with the background music, which creates its own problems. If the song playing is fast, it's hard to keep up. If it's slower, you end up creating squares upon squares and have to wait for them to disappear. The music plays a major role in the game, and the background and graphics change accordingly. Even dropping the blocks creates percussive sounds that become part of the music. It's all crazily immersive. And hypnotic. And addictive. There's the standard challenge mode, where you try to get through as many levels as you can before your blocks pile up to the top of the screen and the game is over, then there's time attack, where you see how many blocks you can eliminate in a given time period, a vs. mode where you can compete against another player or the CPU (in a neat twist, as you do better, the width of your playing area expands, screwing your opponent in the process), and a puzzle mode, where you have to try and land the blocks in the right positions to make simple (and not-so-simple) shapes. As you play, you unlock different songs, background skins, and player icons, but I kind of wish there was more to the collecting aspect. Also, while you can choose to play a single stage, it would've been nice to be able to mix up the stages in the challenge mode, since you have to play through them in the same order every single time. I'm getting really sick of that first song... Another odd glitch that isn't so much a glitch as an odd choice on the designer's part is that when you pause the game, you can still see the majority of the playing field as well as the next few squares that are about to fall. The opportunity to cheat is far too accessable, and I'm a very weak person. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and try to beat my high score again. I still haven't broken 100,000...