Lumines: Electronic Symphony is a puzzle game exclusively for PlayStation Vita. It was actually a launch title and one of the best received ones at that. Playing through Lumines and viewing the gameplay, there will be the inevitable comparison against Tetris. It is more involved than that though. You will have blocks of 2x2 squares that you can move left and right. Each square can be one of two colors and the aim is to form squares of at least 2x2 size. Then once the Time Line passes, they will disappear. Therefore, since the arranged blocks don’t clear immediately, this does make it a bit more difficult.
You can rotate the blocks clockwise or anticlockwise and push down on the d-pad to make it fall faster. Once the blocks stack up to the top of the screen, it will be game over. During this whole time, music will be playing in the background, and the speed of the Time Line will match the speed of the song. You probably won’t notice it too much as you’ll be too busy concentrating and trying to plan ahead. That is, until the difficult ramps up with the speed of the blocks being faster and the Time Line slower, so your screen starts to fill up quick.
There are some gimmicks such as the Avatar abilities. Pressing an icon on the touch screen will give you an ability dependant on which avatar you have equipped. Then you can tap the back touchpad to recharge that ability. It can be distracting as you’re trying to tap and arrange the blocks at the same time, you’ll probably also get hand cramps doing this for long periods of time. There are also two types of special blocks which help in clearing away stray blocks. These are the Chain Block and the Shuffle Block. The Chain Block will eliminate all connected blocks of the same type, while the Shuffle Block will randomly change the blocks into others, if you have heaps left on the screen, this will help create several squares that can be eliminated.
There isn’t a tutorial mode as such; you just have to select the Tutorial screens from the menu. The game has a bunch of modes, the main one being Voyage and in this mode, you aim for a high score. It is pretty much the game’s endless mode as you go through the various skins. If you managed to clear all the skins, then it’ll start looping back. Upon clearing enough blocks, it will transition to the next “skin”. This basically means a new song and changing what the blocks look like. This can be very distracting as you would be used to how the blocks look and now it all changes and throws you off.
There are some neat online elements. For starters, each game you play you will be aiming for a high score. At the main menu, there is a leaderboard with your friends list and it can be fun to compare and try to beat your friend’s score. The other major online component is the World Block, where it takes into account how many blocks players around the world had erased by playing the game. The aim is to eliminate enough such that it erases the World Block. Participating in this will give you bonus experience points.
Experience points are earned by playing any of the game’s modes. Earn enough and you’ll gain a level, which will unlock more avatars for you to use. While it may not seem like it, you’ll easily find yourself spending hours into the game. Go slow and methodically and it can feel endless, go fast and hard and you’ll still spend an hour to clear the Voyage mode (if you’re good enough that is). It can get tough when the blocks fall fast yet the Time Line moves slow so that you have to be really careful not to accidentally build up too high.
There are other modes as well. Stopwatch will give you a time limit in order to create and clear away as many blocks as possible within that limit. Master is a really tough section where you aim to clear a target number of blocks but the speed at which the blocks fall are crazy fast. Finally there is Duel mode which is the game’s multiplayer mode. You can play ad-hoc although it requires both players to have a copy of the game. While you wouldn’t expect a block puzzle game to have stellar graphics, it is actually pretty good. The changing styles of the blocks as well as the background, in conjunction with the music and effects and it can be mesmerizing to watch.
Overall, Lumines: Electronic Symphony is a fun and addictive puzzle game. It is deceptively simple yet complex once the speed kicks in. It is easy to spend hours into this game, and there are a few modes to keep you invested. This game is well worth the cheap price it now commands.
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