Watch your step, for you’ve just entered theGraveyard. Inside, we’ll be digging up games that have long been without a pulse. You’ll see both good and bad souls unearthed every month as we search through the more… forgotten…parts of history.
The Lumines series was a watershed release for the PSP, offering up a Tetris-style puzzle experience on the go, but with a far more modern look and feel alongside a slick contemporary music selection. With Tetusya Mitzuguchi at the helm and his history of music-centric games with Sega including Space Channel 5 and Rez, the foundation was there to create something that would do for the PSP what Tetris did for the Game Boy and lesser extent, Game Boy Color. The original two PSP releases begat a lot of content, but a lot of similarity, making a more live service model that could be updated better. Enter Xbox Live Arcade and Lumines Live, which for my money is the best value the series has offered up in its twenty years thanks to a slew of additional content including music from Mizuguchi’s band, Genki Rockets.
Genki Rockets' Red Glare
With a 2x2 grid falling, your goal is to match four of the same color pieces up before a vertical line scrolls through to start off a new wave of blocks to eliminate. Much like Tetris, you want to avoid large stacks heading towards the top only with a horizontal orientation to contend with instead of a vertical well of blocks like Tetris. The core formula is a riot and one of the most addictive I’ve ever experienced in puzzle gaming thanks to its ever-evolving set of skins throughout the different songs that play and the core gameplay loop being perfect for what it is. Having the possibility of single-color blocks on your falling grid is annoying in a way since it opens up more possibilities to what you can do and lead to you getting one when you want the block either be two of the same or four of the same color, but they add a ton of long-form strategy too.
It’s one thing to just try and keep your lines down throughout the play session, but it’s another to see things line up so perfectly so quickly that you wind up with 1/4 of your playfield cleared out. It’s even better when a single move chains into a larger one. Unlike Tetris, which has a lot of planning you can complement into your core strategy, you can’t fully predict how things will shake out when the vertical clearing line crosses your path. It can be thrilling or disappointing to see how it works out because if you have a few big moves in the works, but it only takes a few blocks out of play, then you have to work extra hard on that next turn to maximize block removal.
Beyond core puzzle gameplay, there’s a touch of tactical RPG in there because there are more do-overs here than in a lot of puzzle games because the surface area is so great. A single bad move won’t take you out of contention for a win and Lumines Live keeps things visually more lively than any other entry thanks to its many different skins. Even in the default game, you have a lot of different art styles to work with for your skins and each can also affect your difficulty. The more normal white and orange setup is easy to see, while the neon-infused yellow and blue areas are tougher to see in a way because parts of the blocks can be obscured by shadows, they’re also more visually-impressive to behold.
Graveyard: Explosive Racing
Explosive Racing follows up on last month’s Burning Road to deliver another stormer of an arcade racer.
Having so much color in the game allows for every skin to stand out and having the skins tied to certain song packs allows you to experience a lot of variety across the different game modes. Facing off with just yourself against the playfield is a tough challenge, while facing a CPU foe adds far more challenge. While a Tetris field is largely unchanged no matter how many players are involved, when you take a widescreen play area and dial it down to a smaller 4:3 area, it changes the nature of how you play the game. You have to change your approach from being relaxed to being far more efficient and ensure that mistakes are kept to a minimum or else you’re going to suffer.
Because the versus playfield is smaller, everything is higher stakes – adding another layer of excitement. Thanks to the smaller area, the vertical line hits the playfield faster than ever, so you really see where you have holes in your game in real-time thanks to this. It’s a blend of infuriating and fun, though, because it’s entertaining to fall short in one game only to do far better thanks to the knowledge gained from falling short before. It’s a shame you’ll go through some of the growing pains, but you wind up better for it and learn about how to be even more efficient in the mainline game when you have the whole playfield to work with.
Time Trials and Tribulations
The blend of fast-paced puzzle gameplay and the never-ending shift of sight and sounds is one that no other series has come close to replicating. While I adored the Vita-only entry and even the mobile entry, the 360-era’s Lumines Live remains my favorite overall entry in the series because of how much content is available overall at a great price point. DLC is frequent and allows for new modes alongside new songs and skin packs to enjoy and that allows for everything to stay fresh for years to come. The PSP versions were hurt a bit by not being able to expand upon the content and the remastered version of the first game was outstanding overall, but hurt as a package not being a compilation. Luckily, Lumines Live remains something that can be enjoyed on modern-day hardware via 360 backwards compatibility working on the Xbox One and Series consoles and all of the DLC is still available too.
Graveyard: Shox
Shox was an EA BIG highlight and offers the kinds of racing thrills and excitement that are rarely seen today.
