Monday 7 January, 2008

I'm not really sure what all the fuss about this game is and I really think I'm trying to give it it's due...but so far I'm terribly unimpressed. Yes, the game is relatively fun and the music and sound effects really do help to make the experience better and yet... I'm getting tired of the same unchanging gameplay and I'm frustrated that I always have to start from "scratch" (ie, in challenge mode you always start from the first song) and I'm also frustrated with how the game "evolves". As far as I can tell, each level never really gets all that much harder and when I lose it's more about an accumulation of prior mistakes (ie, entropy catches up with me) rather than the particular challenge of the level I'm playing. Basically, when you make a mistake here, it's pretty hard to recover...and so your mistakes add up until you lose. :-(

Personally, I found Lumines (or at least the original, which is the only one of the series I've played) to be quite an addicting game. It is very similar to tetris in the way that it can addict you for extended periods of time, yet the music influences of the pieces and stages are what really interest me. The difficulty in the original did change with time; the differing tempos of the music give you more or less time to build up the cubes that will be destoryed the next cycle. They both offer different challenges; faster levels make it more difficult to build combos, and slower levels force you to plan two or three moves ahead so that you do not end up with a huge pile of blocks on one edge of the field that prevent you from using those columns. At least, that's my opinion of the game, and its why I still have fun picking it up even after a few years of playing it.

I guess I need to give it some more time. Perhaps it's the fact that I can't start from any level I find most annoying, especially for a handheld game. Thanks for the comment!