Lumines Remastered (Review)
Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £9.99 (£9.49 for the Digital Deluxe DLC… Which is the soundtrack, some wallpapers, and avatars)
Where To Get It: Steam
Lumines Remastered is, on a basic level, exactly what it says on the tin. It’s the Lumines you may already have if you love the tetromino arcade puzzler, but with a higher resolution, some better menus, and some minor added features such as a versus CPU and multiplayer mode. Not a lot has changed, except that I find this version, oddly, triggers my epilepsy while the previous does not, and, as such, skins that were not colourblind friendly, remain unfriendly to those of us who have colourblindness of some description.
Although this does not look like a problem, the backgrounds are animated, and this seems to make this particular skin harder to differentiate.
So, for those of you who’ve played Lumines before, there’s your paragraph. For those who haven’t, let’s have a chat about feel and difficulty. Because the way Lumines works is quite cool, even if this remaster isn’t something I can recommend to my fellow epileptics.
Lumines, mechanically, works on three main elements. Matching squares with four tiles, of two different colours, into squares of single colours. A wipe bar, which, if you’ve matched a block while the wipe bar’s going across said block? Won’t fully count. And varying the speed of both block falling and the wipe bar to change the difficulty. Early levels are a normal speed for both, but then the block falling speeds up, and, every now and again, the wipe bar… Slows down. Which, considering this follows the usual tetropuzzle rule of “If you fill up a column and try to put a block on that column, you lose” , makes it harder, because matched squares don’t go away until the wipe bar’s fully crossed all the rows.
If you’ve got this many blocks this late, you have a problem.
Clever stuff, and a skilled player, despite being able to take it slower in certain stages, can take advantage of the slower wipe bar to build up some incredibly silly combos, and clear lots and lots of blocks. But mechanics alone doth not a game make, and Lumines also has a solid, clear aesthetic going for it. While, as I mentioned, some levels don’t differentiate the light/dark blocks terribly well, the majority thankfully do, and the music is a good mixture of catchy, dark, pumping, and relaxing. A medley of melodies, if you will. The effects of the game when blocks are cleared pleases my lizard hindbrain, and so, feelwise? It feels good.
Overall, if you already have Lumines Advanced, the only major selling points are the multiplayer/CPU mode and higher resolution graphics, but if you like tetromino puzzlers, Lumines has quite a pedigree, and hasn’t fixed what isn’t broken.
Mmmmm… Parrrrticles…
The Mad Welshman is not, despite the conspiracy theorists, actually a lizard. He’s a werewolf.