Lumines Remastered Review – a classic puzzle, rough on the edges

In this era of remastering and rebooting, everything old becomes "new" again. It is no surprise that Enhance Games is releasing Lumines Remastered today to bring back the classic PlayStation Portable puzzle, Lumines. It's still as fun today as it was in 2004, and at an economical price, it's a great warm-up for the upcoming PS4 / PSVR game from Enhance, Tetris Effect.

But while Lumines is easy to take and put on the laptop, it also touches the platforms PS4, Xbox One and Steam, where larger screens tend to show its age and its roots. So, if you liked Lumines before, or if you're looking for a simple and addictive puzzle game to play on the go, you'll find the convincing remaster – if not, you might want to save your dollars.

What you will like

Unique gameplay

As the story goes, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, CEO of Enhance Games, created Lumines after narrowly missing Tetris' creative license for the PlayStation Portable, merging the musical themes of his Rez shooter with a puzzler. In the main game mode, Challenge, you start with a 16-by-10 empty well, depositing 2 by 2 cubes in the well to make only rectangular matches of four or more blocks. Each game – and each block – has a maximum of two colors to match.

With one exception, blocks are only cleared when a rectangle of 2 by 2 or more consists of only one color. In addition, the rectangle disappears only when it is touched by a timeline that extends from left to right on the screen. To make things happen, Lumines will drop a more marked rare connector block that will erase all the pieces of the same color that it touches, that they are part of contiguous rectangles. Played right, this block allows you to eliminate stranded pieces and then make a bunch of matches from what is above and below them.

As simple as the game mechanics, they are fun, at least in small doses. If you are ready to invest quality time Tetris in learning Lumines rhythms, at some point you will be good enough to fall into a state of trance with the impulses of music, light and vibration – but no higher difficulty levels, where the blocks fall too quickly to relax.

If you're bored of Challenge mode, a puzzle mode places a timer on the screen when you try to assemble objects (like a block-looking dog) using Lumines blocks, but this does not offer great rewards.

A Mission mode also allows you to perform different mini-challenges, and a Time Attack mode sees how many matches you can do in multiple periods of time. As a symbolic reward, you can unlock avatars at the bottom left of the screen through some play modes.

Good music and good visuals by portable standards

One of the biggest prints of Lumines has always been his soundtrack, which uses electronica and slightly vocalized club music to create a 2000s vibe. From the moment the game loads, your speakers or headphones will pulse with optimistic energy, punctuated by falling block sounds and matches, as well as light interstitial effects close to the scratches of the DJ disc. Lumines claims to let you use sound effects to contribute to music, but you are at best a minor player in audio mixing, later gaining the ability to make a playlist of your favorite tunes.

Since the gameplay does not change at all by becoming faster at higher levels, the main trick of Lumines to prevent boredom is reskinning – replacing the background art, the blocks , visual effects and music every time you reach a new level. Some skins are really beautiful and lively, while others are flat and completely boring.

Bold color contrasts sometimes help to make block matches; Similar colors and annoying backgrounds can seriously prevent pairing. Unlocking new skins, and therefore new music, is the main reward of the game to keep playing.

Lumines still sounds good 14 years after its debut, but there is nothing new or new about visual content. It continues to look good on a small screen, but on larger screens it's pretty stuck – no pun intended – but it's true that it's better than what it would have been without remastering in. background.

What you will not like

HD Rumble That Will Creak Your Switch

Years ago, Mizuguchi released a PlayStation 2 accessory called the Trance Vibrator to enhance the sensory experience of playing Rez with a powerful vibrating pack. While Lumines' original PSP version does not vibrate, the Switch version of Lumines Remastered includes several vibration modes, including one that vibrates in sync with music and blocks – not easy – and that vibrates supposedly only with blocks . In an ode to the Trance Vibrator accessory, you can even extend the vibration to all currently coupled controllers.

As a big fan of Tetsuya Mizuguchi's previous games, it's hard to write, but I found the vibration features in Lumines quite noisy to turn off. The HD Rumble engines of My Switch spat out while they were trying to imitate the beats of some of the game's songs, and other songs did not seem to be booming at all. Even the "blocks only" mode was still noisy in a quiet room, although luckily I could not mess with my hands.

I have imported and used the original Trance Vibrator accessory with rez, so I love that this feature exists. But it's not something I can use most of the time – maybe it would be nicer if there was a vibration resistance adjustment.

On a related note, Enhance could enhance the controller's experience by letting the Switch's joysticks move blocks in single-player mode. The game currently mandates Joy-Con's arrow buttons for movement.

A tiring solo mode and a brutal two-player mode

It's hard to call a tiring puzzle game, especially when you can technically ask it at any time, but Lumines Remastered's skin unlocking system requires you to keep playing a single game continuously to unlock more music and backgrounds. There is no restart mid-way into the game at a backup state, either – when you die, you go back to the beginning. At around level 30, there is a good chance of dying just because a misplaced block has disappeared too quickly, and it's not always fun to go back and start all over again just to get there.

In comparison with the slightly cold solo game, the two player mode is without a doubt one of the most brutal I've seen in a puzzle game. The well is initially divided into two, each player taking one side of the screen, and successful matches give you control over a larger portion of the well. In a few minutes – maybe a few seconds – a person will be in such a hurry that moving blocks become impossible.

I did not find this mode particularly fun, and I would have liked there to be more settings to be done so you do not have to be overwhelming so quickly. You can also win extra mediocre skins, but good luck to go beyond level five against the computer.

Conclusion

On the spectrum of good to good, good or bad, Lumines Remastered is closer to "good" than "okay" – a fun but simple puzzle with atypically loud music and uneven graphics. Better, as a short-playing solo experience than on longer continuous stretches, it's also more ideal in portable mode than on the big screen.

Even though you can technically take advantage of Lumines at a lower price on mobile devices, their smaller sinks actually limit the gameplay compared to larger console and computer platforms, and their soundtracks are not as convincing. If you want to take full advantage of the Lumines experience, the reasonable prices and the interesting features of this version have almost offset the remaining asperities.

Score: 79/100

Lumines Remastered is available for the Nintendo Switch, Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One and Steam from June 26th. Enhance sent us a switch code for this review.