Lumines Remastered is a remaster of the first game in the series that was originally for the PSP. It is a rhythm puzzle game that has an emphasis on the music being played. The gameplay, as with a lot of blocky puzzlers, is easy to pick up. Pieces comes in blocks made up of four squares, with two colors. You can move it left and right before dropping it down. The aim is to get four or more blocks of the same color, in a square or rectangular shape, whereby once the Time Line passes over, it’ll erase it and you score points.
The usual options such as being able to rotate the block before dropping the block is here. What sets this game apart is the music that plays, which suits the gameplay really well. As you score points, you’ll level up and the colors, music and speed (known as skins) will change. The tempo of the Time Line will shift, and you’ll have to adjust to the new parameters. This is because you have to take care of both the drop speed of the blocks, and the speed of the Time Line. If you have the situation where the drop speed of the blocks is high, while the Time Line is slow, then you’ll have trouble as the blocks will keep piling up. It’s an interesting dynamic.
You lose the game when the blocks fill up the screen and you can’t place anymore. The game has a variety of modes. The Basic Mode is the default and probably the best as it’s the classic gameplay with no other twists. The Basic Mode in this has you playing a game where you try and get to level 105. Unless you’ve played the game before, you won’t get there, but the urge to attempt again will have you going back. It’s really easy to spend 30 mins or an hour, in one round as you focus on the gameplay and music. While it can get hectic especially if you haven’t been clearing the blocks as much as you would like, it’s also a chill and relaxing game.
As you keep trying and trying, you’ll notice yourself getting better and more able to determine the best spots for certain block combinations. The first time you’ll clear Basic Mode will probably take you over an hour, but you’ll notice yourself chipping away at that time with each try. With the harder skins, you might change tactics and always keep an eye out for the next few blocks that are coming up so that you can plan ahead. This includes the chain blocks which can clear away a chain of the same colored blocks that it’s touching. It’s really satisfying when you manage to clear away your screen just when you think you might lose.
The other thing to lock out for is the Time Line and how it interacts with your blocks. As blocks only disappear as the Time Line passes over them, and there’s a delay with it disappearing, you need to be careful on when to drop your blocks. There will be plenty of times early on when you drop a block just as the Time Line passes over it so it clears away half the block, instead of the whole block, and it’ll throw you off.
Once you’ve cleared Basic Mode, it unlocks both Endless and Shuffle. Endless is just as the name suggests, where you keep playing until you lose, while Shuffle just has the skins come up in a different order. Both are nothing too drastically different compared to Basic. That said, it does suck when you’re deep within a game, and then you get a game over and have to start over from scratch. The other thing is that as you are playing through the game, it’ll unlock new avatars to use (but they’re aesthetics only) and new skins. The graphics of the game are colorful and vibrant, although at times they are deliberately colored in such a way that it can be hard to tell the colors apart.
Then there is Time Attack, where you are given a time limit and you need to clear away as many blocks as you can within that time limit. You can choose between 60 seconds, 180 seconds and 300 seconds. It’s actually quite a hectic mode as you need to focus on speed above everything else. Versus Mode is a head-to-head game against an opponent. You can play against the CPU, and as you clear lines, it’ll expand your play area while reducing you opponents. Sounds good in theory but once you are pushed into a smaller area, it can be hard to reverse course as you have less area to play with and chain combos with.
The remaining two modes are the meatier modes, they are Puzzle Mode and Mission Mode. Puzzle Mode has you arrange the blocks so that it forms the required shapes. It starts off easy like a star or a square, but it’ll eventually get into more difficult and elaborate shapes like a poodle. It’s really difficult as you still need to contend with the automatic dropping of the blocks as well as the time limit.
Mission Mode is similar in that there is an objective and sometimes a time limit. The objectives varies, once again starting off easy like clear all the blocks within one or two moves. However, it soon becomes very difficult. Clearing both Puzzl and Mission modes will add hours to the game, so there is a lot of content here to enjoy. That said, Challenge Mode will still probably be the mode that you’ll keep coming back into as there’s just no beating the default gameplay.
Overall, Lumines Remastered is the definitive version of the Lumines experience. It has pretty much all the modes that the series has added over the years and put on a fresh lick of paint. It looks and plays great, there is just something really soothing and addicting when you’re clearing away blocks with your visual and auditory senses being blasted. The game also highly recommended to be played with a controller capable of haptic feedback, because it adds yet another dimension to the gameplay.
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