"It's amazing at first... but after a while, you'll realize it's style over substance"

Quick pros and cons:
+ Core gameplay is easy to learn and hard to put down (at first)
+ The presentation is amazing, and the changing "skins" are great
+ Wonderful graphics, sound and music
+ Multiplayer is easy to set up and play
+ Great puzzle mode…
- …but it ends too quickly
- The versus mode could use some work, especially the frustrating vs. CPU mode
- The gameplay is addictive at first, but easier to master than other puzzle games
- The standard single-player game difficulty doesn't increase quickly enough
- There's a maximum score, and once you reach it, there's nothing more to the single-player mode

With the release of the new handheld must come the new puzzle game. This was written many years ago…OK, in 1989, with the smash success of Tetris for the original Game Boy. Sadly, Lumines won't be as legendary as Tetris was. At first, it's a truly remarkable and greatly enjoyable experience, but over time, the luster fades and reveals something that isn't all that remarkable after all.

The core gameplay of Lumines is very similar to that of Tetris: you position falling pieces inside of a well. Press Left or Right to slide them, press one of two buttons to rotate them in either direction, and press Down to drop them. Sounds familiar? Well, that's where the similarities end.

In Lumines, all of the pieces are the same shape: squares. Each piece is made up of four smaller squares in a 2x2 arrangement, and these squares will be one of two colors. In each one of the six possible pieces, the colors are arranged differently.
Your job is to arrange the squares back into larger squares consisting entirely of the same color. The squares must be at least 2x2 in size, but can be larger. You can also clear shapes that aren't necessarily squares, but that are made up of squares at least 2x2 in size.

One big twist: when you arrange something that can be cleared, it doesn't clear immediately. The "timeline," a glowing line that continuously sweeps across the playfield, will only clear your pieces after it's completed sweeping over them. This gives you an opportunity to clear even more by attaching more matching pieces, if you're quick enough.

The other element to the gameplay is the special block. One of these will occasionally turn up in one of the two colors. If you form a 2x2 square containing one of these, every connected small square of the same color as the special block will clear along with the special block. By "connected," I mean unblocked by the other color or empty space. You could clear half the board with just one special block, if you plan it right.

Well, that's it. I just described every aspect of the entire core gameplay to you. But then, there's one of the most enjoyable aspects of Lumines that I have not yet described: skins. There are dozens of possible skins, and they affect the colors used in gameplay, the continuously-animating background, and the music that you hear. The audio is quite engaging; every button press, every dropped piece and every clear has a different effect attached, designed to sound like part of the music. Each skin is a completely different theme, and during the endurance-based Challenge Mode, it'll change every few levels. It sounds like a gimmick, but it adds a lot; it feels in ways like more of an experience than just a mere puzzle game. (There's a Single Skin Mode as well, but gameplay-wise, it's identical to the Challenge Mode.)

The gameplay, like in most other puzzle games of this nature, is pretty easy to learn. After a couple of hours, it'll "click," and you'll be progressing through the Challenge Mode, having a blast and eagerly awaiting new skins. Once you reach a new skin, it's "unlocked," and you can access it in the Single Skin Mode, as well as use it for Vs. Mode games.

Another gameplay option is the Puzzle Mode, where you are told not to form squares, but specific objects instead. The Versus option can be played against the computer, or wirelessly against another player running Lumines on their PSP. 2-player games are very easy to set up: just turn on the WLAN switch, select Vs. mode, choose your opponent and go. More skins can be unlocked in the Vs. Computer and Puzzle modes, as well.

So this all sounds great...at first.

Remember the "easy to learn, difficult to master" mantra of many classic board and puzzle games, including Tetris? Well, the same is not true of Lumines. In fact, you may find yourself mastering Lumines quite quickly. One problem is the width of the playing field: it's too big. You have too much room to maneuver your pieces. Players have devised systems for playing each of the six possible blocks in a particular way that works for an infinite amount of time.

Even if you don't use or invent such a system, the width of the playing field helps to expose another flaw of the standard single-player game: the difficulty increases much too slowly. Once you've improved somewhat, the first HOUR will basically be a bore as you wait for the game to speed up. I've had Challenge Mode games that lasted for 2+ hours. For a puzzle game, that is simply too long. These games are supposed to be something you can enjoy for 10 minutes or two hours, not one or the other.

Combine this with the fact that Challenge Mode's score maxes out at 999,999, and you have something that is basically played to be beaten, and then never played again. Who ever heard of a puzzle game with a maximum score? Once you're able to reach this score, you're probably not going to want to invest two to four hours doing it a second time, especially considering that the skins will begin to loop from the beginning long before you reach the end.

There are several ways these problems can be resolved, if a sequel were to surface. If it were personally up to me, I'd ditch the maximum score, narrow the playfield somewhat, make the pieces' falling speed increase more quickly, and include a gameplay option for a 3rd color. In fact, if a sequel were to surface and integrate those four elements, I have a feeling it'd be a lot more engaging.

The two options that don't last as long as Challenge Mode--Puzzle and Versus--have their own issues. Once you get the hang of Puzzle, you can breeze through it in only a couple of hours, and then... it's over. An option to generate random Puzzles would have been nice.

As for the Versus mode... well, it just isn't all that fair. In one pass of the timeline, whichever player has cleared more squares than the other will have their area of the playfield increase by one column, while their opponent's decreases by the same. As the size of your playfield decreases, it becomes increasingly more difficult to clear more squares than your opponent, who has plenty of pieces to work with and put together. So basically, if you lose ground early on, it can be nearly impossible to fight your way back again. Entire rounds can be decided in mere seconds. Some sort of system involving garbage blocks would have been more interesting, especially considering the fact that the current system gives no reward for clearing 10 more squares than your opponent rather than just 1; you still just get that same one column off their side.
To make matters even more frustrating, the ten-stage-long Vs. Com mode has no continue feature, so if you lose even one round, it's back to the beginning...arrrgh!

The end result of all of these problems is that Lumines doesn't have the kind of replay value other puzzle games do, which is really a shame, because it's a blast for the time that you actually will play it. I hope that in the future we'll see a sequel that fixes these problems and provides the full, addictive and replayable experience that Lumines should have been.

Graphics: 10
Pulsating colors, brilliant explosions, vivid animating backgrounds, stunning effects... the graphics are simply beautiful, engaging, mesmerizing. Never before has a puzzle game looked this good.

Sound: 10
Equally amazing are the sound and music. There's never been a puzzle game that's sounded this good, either. For a great time, turn the lights off, put headphones on, sit back and enjoy.

Gameplay: 6
At first, it's a 10. But once you get better at it, you'll realize that the standard single-player modes are too easy and that the Versus mode needs work. I hate to say this, but in the end, the audiovisuals completely outshine a lackluster game.

Features/Replay: 5
Once you get good enough at the Challenge Mode to reach the maximum possible score, or at least to last two hours--which doesn't take as long as you'd think--will you really want to play it ever again? Puzzle Mode ends too quickly, Versus isn't all that much fun, and ... that's it.

Overall: 6
I hate to give this game a low score, because I thought it was more like a 9 or 10...for about 10 hours or so. But after that, Lumines becomes style over substance, plain and simple. Sure, you may think it's better than it is, but then ask yourself: are you really going to play it again?

Also try: Tetris (multiple), Tetris Attack (SNES), Namcomuseum Battle Collection (PSP)

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/08/05