Hands on with Luminator on DS
Clone wars?
When it comes to artefacts like books and films, copyright can be a difficult issue to sort out. After all, there are only supposed to be seven distinct plots in the world, so there's always scope for some crossover. But for forms such as music – Avril Lavigne and The Rubinoos' current Girlfriend/Boyfriend spat springs to mind – or games, however, inspiration is typically easier to spot.
Still, calling this block manipulation game Luminator DS suggests that developer Denaris and publisher Xider are keener to flaunt any similarity to existing products for marketing purposes, rather than trying to hide it.
You see, Luminator shares a string of attributes with Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Q Entertainment's excellent music/block-based PSP game, Lumines, only here it's on a DS.
The rotation of falling two-tone blocks into configurations of at least 2 x 2 blocks of one colour, which are then removed from the screen by a vertical line sweeping from left to right, is spot on. Even the playing area is the same: 10 blocks high by 16 blocks wide. Any differences – the block colour and background themes change after you've removed 50 blocks in the case of Luminator, while the 'bomb' blocks have to be dropped into 2 x 2 formation immediately for them to work – are minor.
That said, from what we've tried so far, Luminator doesn't play anything like as well as Lumines, with the second theme, for example, very confusing thanks to its clashing colour scheme.
The graphics in this DS title are nothing like as polished either, nor is the music as varied as Lumines', although there is a remix of Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time for those interested in that sort of thing. Perhaps most troubling though is the lack of any attempt to use specific DS hardware features such as the touchscreen or microphone.
So what to make of Luminator? If it was a non-commercial homebrew game, we might be impressed by the cheekiness of the endeavour. As a retail release, albeit budget, it's harder to look past. Frankly, we're rather surprised Nintendo allows this sort of thing.
Luminator DS is due to be released in August.
