Lumines: Electronic Symphony

The Short

Pros
- Pretty, HD Lumines action
- Addition of "character powers" adds a bit more control and variation to the game
- Powerups seem to drop more frequently. I'm ok with this.
- Probably the best soundtrack out of all the Lumines games
- Is on PSVita, a portable system, which is where it plays best

Cons
- It's...just more Lumines.
- They still haven't found out a way to make any crazy modes or something with this puzzle concept
- Oh wait, there's touch screen controls. Don't use them.

Shapes and a beat line, huh? Must be Chime! Wait...

The Long

I'm gonna save you some time and link you to where I already reviewed Lumines on the PSP. And I just now realized that in that review I sort of semi-promised to review Lumines 2 and never did. Oops.

Anyway, it's another Sony handheld, which means ya gotta have Lumines. After a brief diversion onto Xbox Live, Lumines is back where it started, and upgraded for the Vita. What new tricks does Lumines have? Is it mixing up the beat (hur hur) in some wacky ways? Is this the Lumines gritty reboot?

Well...no, not really. But it's still a blast to play. So I guess it's still ok.

For some reason, my brain can't process these circles. I always do worse on this theme. 

I'll be brief on how Lumines works since I already went over it before. There's 2x2 squares full of two-colored...more squares (or sometimes circles, see above). When you get at last four of the same color in a big square together, it connects and can be deleted. Until it is deleted by the moving beat line (which moves with the tempo of the song), you can attach any more 2 colors to that chain, which means latching as many squares (or circles) to your cluster before the beat line eats it for dinner is imperative. You can chain these together for Mad Points, or just play really badly like I do and frantically scramble to not completely fail before the next song happens. Up to you.

What sets the game apart is not only its simplicity, but its reliance on soundtrack (it seems to be a theme this week, me reviewing musical-type games. Weird). Since the bar moves with the beat, your time to expand on your clusters varies depending on the song. The game also moves through songs at a pretty decent rate (each song is usually around 2-4 minutes), which causes both a style change (still a nice touch) and a tempo change. So basically you try to survive for as many songs as possible in the "Bon Voyage" mode, and when too many squares/circles reach the top you lose.

Gotta keep with the beat.

There are two key powerups you can get. One makes it so every piece touching it of the same color becomes deleteable. This is a great powerup if you play like me: badly. I somehow play this game like Magical Beat or Puyo Puyo, where I think attaching tons of the same color together in a snake-like line is a good way to play. It isn't. It's a good way to lose. But luckily this power up let me eliminate whole chains of these things, leaving only the other color behind to become a Massive Awesome Combo which I totally planned and it was my strategy all along.

The other powerup does something. I don't know what. I know, I should probably research this, but I can't be bothered. Sometimes it makes clusters where there weren't any, so I'm thankful to this powerup. But not as thankful as the chain one. It's my favorite.

A big change to the Vita version is the ability to have an Avatar ability. Basically you can pick from five "characters" to go into the game with, and each has a rechargeable power. The one I use most is the one that gives you a free snake-chain-powerup thing, as you can imagine based on my playstyle above, but they do a large variety of different things to mix up your game. These powerups recharge as you play (they recharge pretty dang slowly, though), so they're mostly used if you get in a tight spot.

It's a block party, ha ha ha. 

The other major Vita change is touch screen controls. I am going to cop-out and just say: don't play with touch screen controls. It's a nice novelty early on, but the later levels get crazy frantic fast, and it's just not possible to use a touch screen for it. I imagine Sony made them put this in so it could be a bullet point on the box, but it adds nothing to the game.

It also has it's usual multiplayer, which in turn has these power-up avatars, which gives you a bit more flavor to your matches. But in the end, it's basically just the same multiplayer as all over versions.

...which is the only real complaint I have with Lumines: Electronic Symphony: touch screen controls and avatars aside, this is the exact same game as Lumines. Well, I guess power-ups do seem to drop more frequently, but that's hardly anything to write home about. There's no new modes, no variations or a "puzzle mode" (which I think this game could use), and as a bonus you have to navigate the menus with touch controls (...why?). They literally sold me the same game I've bought four times already on PSP and Xbox.

They've got my number. 

And yet, for some reason, I'm totally ok with this. Why? Well, the game is like $10 on Amazon, and it is still probably the best handheld puzzle game since Tetris made the Game Boy cool. The new graphical style is really slick on the Vita's screen, with the cubes exhuming just the right about of weird bright glow and rapid changing style to keep you interested. It's a really pretty game, and really really addicting, the kind you feel you're never quite good enough at but just good enough to have fun. You know. That kind.

The soundtrack is probably my favorite out of all the Lumines games. Rumor has it this was originally going to be a "reboot" of Lumines (yes, a reboot of a puzzle game) called Daft Punk: Lumines. I swear I'm not making this up. They enlisted Daft Punk to write all the songs, but they ended up being too busy with both the Tron: Legacy soundtrack and the album Random Access Memories.

Regardless, the soundtrack consists of mostly licensed electronic music, and I like pretty much all of it. There's no real duds that I can think of, though a few certainly stand out more than others. I'd tell you which one, but I have no idea what any of the song names are, even with the robot girl voice speaking their names before each level. I'm too busy looking at colored squares, man!

All these screenshots are starting to look really similar. 

In the end, those looking for some sort of huge mix-up to the Lumines series aren't going to find it here. But they will find is a rad puzzle game ported to their new handheld, waiting to suck up hours and hours of their time on the bus. It's still fun, easy to pick up but hard to master, with great music and vibrant colors and a real slick style that makes it memorable. While Avatar Powers are a step in the right direction (and touch screen controls are not), I still feel a bit miffed at the lack of modes here. But hey, again, it was like $10, and I've probably sunk a good dozen hours into it already just commuting. So I think I'm ok with it.

If you have a PSVita, let me know because none of my friends seem to own one. But seriously, if you have a PSVita, this game is pretty much mandatory if you have any affinity for puzzle games. Get it, and be iLUMINESinated. Illuminated. Ilum...you know what? I quit.

Four out of five stars. 

And here's a photo of a guy playing it. Isn't he having FUN? Can't you tell from his hands how much FUN HE IS HAVING?!