Lumines
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| Lumines

One thing the Xperia Play's roster of titles is missing is a really great puzzle game. It's a bit strange, because mobile platforms are usually awash with puzzlers.

Perhaps a Lumines game will set things right. After all, the series first saw the light of day on the PSP, where it was generally agreed to be rather splendid.

It shouldn't be too difficult to get it right on what is essentially a baby PSP that makes phone calls.

Block rocking beats

Lumines is a blend of puzzler and music game, where you try to connect blocks of the same colour in 2x2 squares or larger. Blocks drop steadily from the top of the screen, and a time line sweeps across it.

When the time line passes through a connected square it's removed from play. Your job is to clear a set number of blocks before the pile reaches the top of the screen.

To keep things varied, different skins change the colour of the blocks you're trying to match up, the background of the level, and the music that you're playing along to.

More often than not a change in music also means a change in tempo, which means a change in the speed the time bar moves across the screen.

The light okay

Still, there are only four different modes to play through, and none of them is especially different from the others. Only Dig Down really plays with the format, tasking you with burrowing through rows of blocks to the bottom of the screen.

Everything is presented in a neat little package, and while the controls are simple, playing Lumines with a D-pad and buttons feels a lot more comfortable than using a touchscreen ever did.

Unfortunately, the lack of content and innovation is telling. Lumines is fun, but six years on from its debut there just isn't enough meat on its bones or innovation for it to fill the vacant position of classic Xperia puzzler.

Lumines

A solid game that should keep you entertained for a while, Lumines is lacking the content and quality needed to make it really great
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.