738th played so far
Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2006
Developer: Q Entertainment
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
There are a bunch of games that take after Tetris and the Lumines series always seemed like a worthy one. While not music or rhythm based, the game’s pace influenced the music in a way that made it feel like the two interacted that much.
Lumines Live was developed alongside the official sequel (which was aimed more at the portable PSP) and is listed in the book as having some issues with expensive DLC, but as I played it on an Xbox Live Arcade collection, that won’t bother me as much.
Our Thoughts
The core gameplay of Lumines stays the same in Lumines Live, blocks drop and you need to combine them into ever growing blocks. While you’re getting into it, this quickly piles up, but as you get in the game and reach the flow, the placement starts to make more sense and you get in this flow where, with a bit of luck, you get some big cascades.
It gets a bit finicky when you start reaching the top row – dropping down gets pretty touchy and you get the column of pieces that you see too often. It got me some (near) losses, but was more an annoyance than a real problem in the game.
I still haven’t seen quite what the improvements are from the base game though. The book write up mostly mentions the first impact of (larger) DLC packs, but I didn’t really experience those and so I felt I mostly got the big screen experience.
Final Thoughts
I guess I might have noticed some differences in the different modes, but playing through the game still felt the same as before. It’s fine with me – the Lumines formula works really well. It’s still great fun and the choice between the different games probably comes down more to what devices you have access to.